title: Mindful Design and Its Role In Sustainable Rituals

subject: Awareness--Experimental design--Water conservation--Waste minimization--Human behavior--Sustainable design

abstract: This paper explores whether designed objects can influence conscious, mindful behaviors and lead to the reduction of wasteful habits surrounding water use in the kitchen. The aim is to find answers to the following questions: can a designed object make people live more consciously, and can this consciousness reduce the amount of water wasted or overused in North American kitchens? A series of experience prototypes explore how to bring awareness to the task at hand, minimize the type of multitasking that engenders waste, and transform behavior around water usage. The prototypes provide insights into the successes and failures of each experience and indicate a future direction for opportunities. It is an investigation  of how good design can change mundane tasks into meaningful, conscious experiences that have sustainable outcomes.  This paper addresses B.J. Fogg’s behavior  change model and the Decomposed Theory of Planned Behavior. These behavior theories are  joined with ideas about sustainable initiatives and mindful thinking to develop design criteria. Mindful thinking is deeply rooted in Buddhist philosophy; as such, this thesis  investigates Zen Buddhist philosophies as a background  for context, scenario development and support towards sustainable, mindful living. This thesis concludes with a prototype that evokes a meditative  pleasure as part of the mealtime clean-up ritual, ultimately proposing that quality of experience can be more desirable than saving time.

abstract: Behavior

abstract: Sustainability

abstract: Design

abstract: Mindfulness

abstract: Ritual

abstract: Research


title: iCare: Providing Patient Advocates with an Integrated Supportive Mobile System

type: thesis Text

contributor: Emily Carr University of Art and Design Graduate Studies (Degree granting institution)

contributor: Assadbeigi, Sogol (Sogol Assadbeigi) (author)

format:
63 p.
electronic

rights: This thesis is available to view and copy for research and educational purposes only, provided that it is not altered in any way and is properly acknowledged, including citing the author(s), title and full bibliographic details.

subject: iOS--Internet--Design--Human-computer interaction--Cellphones--Research--Technology--Medicine--Health

abstract: The implementation of restorative design solutions in mobile healthcare is an emerging field in design practice. There is, however, a significant knowledge deficit in family/patient-centric designs and systems. This paper describes the importance of implementing restorative and stress reducing solutions for patient advocates and caregivers. This research investigates the potential of a mobile iOS application and the benefits it could have for families and friends caring for chronically ill patients. The application allows the patient advocate to input and recover patient health data and provides social support via an integrated networking platform. The design of the application enables a holistic experience that draws attention to the often neglected emotional and social needs of the patient advocate. Its purpose is to improve health related outcomes and communication between patients, caretakers, and care providers. Empathic and User Experience (UX) design tools are triangulated with mHealth practices in the development of the platform. Designer John Maeda’s Laws of Simplicity, Nathan Shedroff’s Experience Design and Donald A. Norman’s Human Centered Design processes are described in detail as they identify some of the fundamentals of usability, aesthetics, cognition and interaction with operating systems. Conclusions are drawn from the analysis of six co-design attendees, thirty semi-structured interviews and three user testing focus groups.


title: Born Across Grey Water

contributor: Novak, Dasha Dana (Dasha Dana Novak) (author)

format:
45 p.
electronic

subject: Liminality--Ethnology--Identity (Psychology) in art--Self-perception in art

abstract: I position my artistic inquiry at the edge of chaos. It is here that the dynamic space of possibilities opens up, from which a new worldview might be born. I am drawing from a sense of process; transgression of borders creates new ways of perceiving. The space between the borders, the liminal space, is constantly informed by transgressions of human thought processes and gestures toward new ways of seeing. Human existence is increasingly liminal. Mechanistic viewing caused by specialization in all spheres of human activity, including our language, has lead to an overall sense of fragmentation, automatic functioning of our thought, and division through of fields of experience. The modern “Machine” has cauterized our attachments to the natural world and brought us to proximity with major ecological shift. As an immigrant and mother, no stranger to liminal space, I have searched for a sense of connection to Canadian cultural and natural environment through the use of photographic and video media. My need to connect initiated the exploration of landscape and motherhood embodiment and, eventually, the scrutiny of grey water’s connective character. My visual essay invites the reader to consider several issues for which I have used the metaphor of grey water. Grey water, just like liminal space or connectives space, holds together and separates at the same time. In a constant state of transition, it dissolves borders, mutates through time and spaces, enfolding shapes and ideas, and unfolding them back into the flow. It gestures toward wholeness and connectivity. Acceptance and sensitivity to ever changing differences and similarities emerging through the murky character of grey water can help us create a new frame of mind in which there is a common consciousness.


title: Absurd Naturalism: Field Biology on the Crust of the Earth

contributor: Karow, Allison (Sunny) (Sunny Karow) (author)

subject: Biology--DIY--Craft--Genetics--Collections--Installations--Sculpture

abstract: This project examines the growth and accumulation of collections, and the political implications of categorization in three installations: Lithosphere, Stones Shaped by Chance, and Chelonioidea. These installations invent worlds in a parallel universe; with their own biologies and genetics. They are influenced by scientific initiatives such as The Human Genome Project and Biosphere 2, which provide a conceptual framework for artworks that examine systems for life cycles and analysis. Using taxonomy, horror vacui, encyclopedias, and cabinets of curiosities as references, I accumulate my own collections with an awareness of the idiosyncrasies inherent to any collection. I use the term Absurd Naturalism to describe the impossibility of maintaining a neutral and omniscient standpoint as the creator of a collection. In this way, it also describes the field I am working in – problems and solutions circle one another until they are indistinguishable, and the work comes out of the center of this spiral. My installations take form by interpreting ecological systems, using handmade, crafted, and found materials. Repetition, mutation, and reproduction are central in both the content and the methodology. Drawing is the source of all mutations. Here, the aesthetics of DIY, childhood craft, queer spaces, and underground punk are used to question the authority of information and the meaning of scientific facts. While artists such as Albertus Seba and Luigi Serafini provide a conceptual basis for my work, collectives such as Paper Rad and Wham City serve as both my contemporaries, and my audience. Growth and categorization oscillate between the personal and the political in this project. The research questions move under my own skin and back into the studio. I am interested in genetics as the basis for familial relation and sameness, genetic mutation as a marker for change, and how genetics functions in redefining the category of biological life.


title: Perceptual Moment

format:
58 p.
electronic

subject: Video installations (Art)--Video art--Phenomenology and art--Neurosciences

abstract: Moving image art can provide unique possibilities for making sense of our surrounding reality. Consisting of a series of artworks produced through a creative research methodology, this thesis project explores wonderment and its role in visual perception. The series, Perceptual Moments, is comprised of short, evocative video works presented in a variety of modes including interactive and sculptural installation. To question the role of vision in mediating reality, the works engage the viewer through an intensive experience of seeing. This accompanying essay explores key visual and editing devices in the series that appear to have a role in shaping the viewer’s perception and interpretation of the visual experience, including “the chasm,” “the blur” and “interactive installation.” The essay also investigates the motivation behind the works through journal entries and offers critical analyses for each production. The visual devices in question are grounded within the context of psychology, neuroscience, phenomenology and film theories. Philosopher Gaston Bachelard provides an anchor for the concept of wonderment, while theorists Jonathan Crary and Gilles Deleuze create dialogical space around the act of viewing filmic images and the affect that it involves. The devices are also observed in other media works, including seminal pieces by Stan Brackhage, Kurt Kren and Jan Svankmajer as well as contemporary figures such as Nathalie Djurbergand Matt Hope.

abstract: Psychology

abstract: Visual perception

abstract: Film


title: Being Among: Reassembled Parts of an Incomplete Machine

type: Collection Text thesis

subject: Installations (Art)--Machines--Psychology

subject: Sculpture

subject: Assemblage (Art)

abstract: Through practice-based and theoretical research, I consider relationships of connection and separation between objects, other living things, and myself against the backdrop of Western capitalist culture. Inspired by the practice-based research model of Graeme Sullivan, and Sarat Maharaj’s vision of the “contraption for generating knowledge,” I animate digital and kinetic assemblages as automated contraptions of inquiry (Maharaj 42). My practice employs a metonymic approach, activating the resonance of materiality and affect in order to draw the viewer toward alternate perceptions. Jean Baudrillard’s theory of consumption, and Agamben’s critique of anthropocentric systems of human/non-human separation inform the social context for my research. The thesis includes literary and visual art examples of ways cultural productions can shed light on conceptual dualities in Western society. Franz Kafka’s story Metamorphosis and Alan Rath’s sculptural assemblage Hound each portrays an implied fluidity between the human and non-human body. Mark Dion’s work brings into question the borders between nature and human culture, challenging our perceptions of such categories by repositioning the order of things (Thompson 46). The artworks—Boxette, Gidget Flying, and Mothlung—produced during my practice based research, use empathy, humour, and occasionally unease to draw the viewer toward a slightly altered perception of the relationship between humans and the things around us. My inquiry questions exclusions in Western ontology that have separated humans from non-humans. It reimagines these relationships not as subjects to objects, but as beings among beings, in hope of edging us toward more thoughtful relationships with the other things and beings of the world.


title: Uncertain Meanings: Voice-Off, Subtitles and Postmodern Allegories in My Recent Works

subject: Allegory--Experimental--Film--Video art--Symbolism--Translation--Graduate Studies--Media

abstract: This thesis is about my recent works and some questions intimately related to them, with particular attention to my thesis project; the single channel video, I usually live abroad. This work plays with voice-over in order to discuss its traditional authoritative and absolute meaning. Further, the work reveals the impossibility of establishing an organic unity of meaning, proliferating the possible interpretation of the fragments that constitute the work. I will use the concept of “postmodern allegory” as defined by Jeremy Tambling to interpret my recent works that refer to the historic breakdown of ideologies whose fixed values and meanings seem incapable of interpreting contemporary reality. How can voice-over be used beyond the realms of authority and objectivity that are usually associated with this component of cinematic language? Instead of considering voice-over as belonging to a separate space from that of the images, I propose that it creates an interstitial space for a negotiation between the spoken text and the images. What is at stake for me is not the authority of the voice-over but its possibility to question objectivity through a subjective point of view able to provoke individual reactions among viewers. A second concern is what the potentialities are of the relationship between images and subtitles? The dominant use of subtitles is translation. I propose that there are other more creative uses of texts juxtaposed with images. Subtitles are for example a way to express unspoken thoughts or a possibility to subvert the centrality of the image in movies and videos, they can also create a dialogue instead of a translation in their relationship with the voice. This thesis also refers to a conception of allegory, developed by Walter Benjamin and Paul de Man, that is essential in exploring the deceptive nature of the language I use and the meanings I can communicate with it. I am specifically considering postmodern allegories as something distant from traditional allegories. Allegory is a device to express, through the use of fragments, a world in which it is impossible to establish any definitive meaning. Differently than a metaphor, an allegory doesn't state that A=B and it doesn't establish a consecutive pattern in which we associate something specific with one other specific thing, but often it creates a successive pattern open to several interpretations that fracture instead of unifying any further meaning. My recent works aim to feed this pattern.


title: Beyond the Frame

format:
43 p.
electronic

subject: Video Art--Installations--Sculpture--Environment--Ethics

abstract: This thesis essay describes a body of work developed for the Low Residency Masters of Applied Arts program, which is presented in the form of three video installation environments: Ripple Effects (2012), Veiled Effects (2012), and Shoreline (2013). Video images of outdoor scenes are projected onto sculptural forms that set up points of indeterminacy to address our mediated and constructed relationship with the environment. The research focuses on a phenomenological connection to the environment supported by Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the “chiasmic embrace”, a relationship that acknowledges a two-way communication between our bodies and the environment. There is also a consideration of Timothy Morton's “dark ecology” that looks at the underbelly of environmental critique. The art works developed for the thesis examine how the aestheticization of nature turns it into abstract and ideological space, ignoring it as a complex and interconnected ecosystem. The work that emerged from the process of research and experimentation engages a vision of nature as an altered, synthetic, and hybrid environment. My practice is contextualized in part by examining what I find productive and generative in the work of Dan Graham, Bill Viola, Diana Thater, Ann Hamilton, and Char Davies, artists whose practices focus on an embodied awareness of the environment. In addition to Merleau-Ponty, and Timothy Morton, the ideas of thinkers and theorists such as Susan Stewart, Terry Smith, and Marshall McLuhan, add perspective to a discussion that addresses the relationship between aesthetics and environmental ethics.


title: Documentary in Z Space

format:
44 p.
electronic

subject: Stereoscopic cameras--Cinematography--3-D films--Documentary films

abstract: My thesis is an attempt to determine whether 3D is a useful story telling technique for documentary filmmakers. As part of the discussion I look at the utilization of 3D in relation to the spectator’s experience. In the text I endeavor to determine what embodied knowledge 2D documentary practitioners incorporate during the process of producing a 3D documentary. Primarily my practice has been in the directing, writing and producing of documentary films. In the thesis I provide a rationale for temporarily departing from the capture of moving images. As well, I explore the choice of using a stereoscopic digital still camera as a means of conducting the research.In essence the research exposes how my documentary methods codified in two dimensions translate into 3D. The objective of the research is to provide filmmakers with new information, which will allow them to comprehend the potential positive and negative boundaries of 3D creation. During the research I determine how the process of capturing 3D images changes the discourse that the filmmaker has with the viewer. I scrutinize how 3D changes the documentary director’s agency and lessens the authorial relationship that we have with our audience. In the thesis I converse about how 3D has altered my practice as an autobiographical filmmaker and situate my production in relation to documentary theory. I also contrast my own practice in relation to that of other autobiographical documentarians.

abstract: Video Art

abstract: Criticism

abstract: Film

abstract: Media


title: Unmaking: Exploring Agency Through Unmaking

type: thesis Collection Text

subject: Technology--Repairing--Resourcefulness--Sustainability

abstract: This thesis proposes that if people and local communities were more skilled in making and repair, they could be more resourceful with the objects around them, making it possible to engage in more sustainable practices. Such skills afford a revised pattern to the consumption of products, services and materials. The thesis explores an observed gap between a person’s sense of agency and their capabilities to act in more sustainable ways. Maker movements, Transition Towns, and other project-based learning organizations like Vancouver’s Citystudio and Costa Rica’s Earth University, are re-skilling people to live more sustainable lives. Communal learning and tangible skills build more self-reliant communities. These movements are seen as vital steps in a long path toward sustainable local and circular economies. Through a series of hands on ‘Unmaking’ workshops the research attempts to leverage our relationship to waste electronics and appliances as mode of exploration to discuss ideas of agency, capability and curiosity. By taking waste electronics and appliances apart, un-boxing the black-box, participants mindfully investigate our complicity in their existence, and ultimately develop new understandings and skills to collaboratively tackle their adverse effects. The act of Unmaking, not only provides a platform for discussion, but also gives participants an opportunity for co-learning driven by mutual curiosity. The heuristic nature of this research opens up an exploratory space for designers and non-designers alike that encourages a reflective practice. The resistance to adopt more sustainable lifestyles partly lies in a lack of understanding of our built environment, the resources and energies involved in its production, and a sense of value in the objects we encounter in our daily lives.


title: Form Follows Sound: Designing For Sound Awareness

contributor: George Lysikatos Lysikatos, George (Author)

subject: Visual communication--Visual perception--City sounds--Sound-waves

abstract: Sound is a prominent feature of our urban environment, affecting us in many ways. Studies show that sound levels in cities are increasing every year. Considering the fact that our well-being is closely related to everyday sound, there is an apparent interconnection between them. Active listening to the surrounding acoustic environment offers the ability to appreciate sounds and articulate auditory needs having an impact on our well-being. Being aware of sound and expressing what we want to hear can lead to tangible transformation and change in our urban acoustic environment and space. This thesis explores the potential of sound visualization and the representation of auditory information as a means of enhancing perception about urban sounds in our daily interactions. Through practice-based design research, studies in sound and music visualization with a focus on perception of shapes and semiotics, the main body of this work intends to gain insights into sound perception and its potential relationship with visual form. This research led to the creation of ‘Right Hear’, a map depicting the evolving soundscapes of Vancouver. ‘Right Hear’ aims to invite users to explore their own acoustic sense of place and become aware of the urban sounds by offering the ability to simultaneously listen and see sounds on a visual map. In parallel with this, the body of this work led to a series of exercises in the notation of sound and translation of graphic scores that looks into the ways that people from diverse fields of practice perceive, translate and respond to abstract shapes.


title: Democratizing Software Design Through Functional Individualization of Creative Software

type: Text thesis

contributor: Emily Carr University of Art and Design Graduate studies (Degree granting institution)

format:
66 p.
electronic
electronic

subject:
Human-computer interaction
Self-adaptive software
Visual programming (Computer science)
Intelligent user interfaces
Open source software
Modularity

abstract: The evolution of creative software is informed by the traditional computer-science methods of development. This results in creation of generic software with task-oriented perspective. User testing data and feedback that sampled from different individuals is used in a way that ignores people's individual differences. Creative software like Adobe Photoshop have become the digital toolboxes of digital designers, similar to the physical toolbox of a craftperson. While physical craftspeople have the liberty to choose and create each one of their tools to individualize the physical toolbox, digital toolboxes tend to be collections of immutable software tasks, packaged into user interfaces that allow for minimal amounts of customization. The creative software user is not involved in the part of the software development conversation due to high levels of entry to learning programming, apart from suggesting software features in crowded web forums. This issue has not been addressed by the existing open source software culture. This research contemplates a systematic approach for enabling all users to democratically participate in the design process of creative software, individualize and extend the application logic in order to bridge the gap between their intent and the output. A new creative software suite that is open to future appropriation through modularity and social extendability for the purpose of dynamically adapting to individual differences is designed and presented as a proof of concept.

abstract: Submitted in partial fulllment of the degree of Master of Design

abstract: HCI

abstract: Adaptive software learning

abstract: Direct manipulation

abstract: Visual programming

abstract: Appropriation of technology

abstract: Functional individualization

abstract: Online collaboration

abstract: individual differences

abstract: intelligent user interfaces

abstract: Open source

abstract: Creative software

abstract: Functional modularization


title: Activating Spaces: A Practice-Based Exploration of the Role of Interactivity in Public Space

format:
68 p.
electronic

subject: Digital media--Interactive art--Design--Public space

abstract: Digital media technologies are shaping the experience of public space. This is even more true as systems evolve that can sense and react to what is happening around them. With this informational reshaping of our urban environment, designers are called on to critically engage and create legible moments in the multiple fluid realities of our cities. This thesis project explores the role that design interventions might have in revealing the plasticity of the built environment and public space. The messages that are projected in public space are made up of content that is shaped by its surroundings, that is to say the reception of a given message is dependent not only on the media or story for its legibility, but also on the constantly changing physical context of the space and its characteristics. This thesis project attempts to discover a methodology for evaluating the delivery of content in relation to the changing physical context of its transmission within space.


title: Healthy Heroes: Promoting Healthy Behaviour Change for Weight-Related Body Issues in Canadian Families

contributor: Baratta, Jessica (Jessica Baratta) (author)

format:
89 p.
electronic
electronic

subject:
Families
Body image
Superheroes

abstract:
The pursuit for an idealistic body permeates contemporary culture, with research drawing connections to body image dissatisfaction and its emergence in children as young as age 5 (Lowes & Tiggemann, 2003). This Master of Design thesis project focuses on the impact of the parent-child relationship and its importance in the healthy development of a child’s self-image.
The scope of the work addresses Canadian parents with a child between the ages of 4-6, emphasizing the influence of their role in promoting positive body awareness during early childhood. this project considers how design may affect the knowledge, perspectives and behaviours of young Canadian families who are struggling with body dissatisfaction. a review of precedent literature triangulates the inquiry within the partnering  fields of health and social sciences. Various participatory design methods were introduced in a human-centered approach, collaborating with parents to address the gaps in contemporary parenting resources.
A synthesis of primary and secondary research resulted in the designed outcome of “healthy heroes”; a behaviour change system that supports Canadian families in communicating and engaging in positive health behaviours. The system is made up of tools centered around the narrative of the healthy heroes superhero team; a set of four children who use their natural, intrinsic traits as superpowers within everyday life. The tools encourage healthy behaviours through shared parent-child experiences, providing children with the education and agency to develop lifelong resiliency skills in an entertaining way.

abstract: In support of the fulfillment of the degree of Master of Design at Emily Carr University of Art and Design.

abstract: Canadian families

abstract: Parent-child relationship

abstract: Early childhood

abstract: Body dissatisfaction

abstract: Weight

abstract: Healthy

abstract: Transformative design

abstract: Behaviour change

abstract: Superpowers

abstract: Parasocial experience

abstract: Resilience

abstract: Co-creation

abstract: Cultural probe

abstract: Affinity diagramming


title: Sound and Vision

format:
45 p.
electronic
electronic

subject:
Electronic surveillance
Noise
Soundscapes (Music)
Light art
Privacy

abstract:
This thesis outlines the processes, methodology, and research for my practice which is based on sound and light. This paper unpacks the process and development of two major works, Binary Ghost Planet (2015) and Lines of Light Receding (2016). These two pieces emerged from my research into the subjects of online privacy breeches and surveillance. Our online activities are assembled into a profile which is used by corporate and governmental bodies. The result of my research in these areas developed a central focus on two questions: what is the sound of online surveillance? What does the world of this profile sound like?
The installations were meant to create immersive phenomenological experiences for the viewer that evoke a sense of time and place inspired by a virtual world. As such, the evolving production process of these works has been essential in creating these experiences. Challenging the viewer and their own perception are key to the outcome of this practice.

abstract: In support of the fulfillment of Low residency Master of Applied Arts degree.


title: My Journey Into the Sensations of Sight

contributor: Rauscher, Morgan (Morgan Rauscher) (author)

format:
52 p.
electronic

subject: Technology--Interactive art--Ineteractive multimedia--Multimedia--Digital media--Art and science--Science--Art and technology

abstract: Electronic media technology provides artists with tools for exploring interactivity. New immersive media sensations can result from the interactions between viewers and electronic artwork. This thesis is a record of my personal creative journey, including the ideas and the resulting interactive artworks that have unfolded on a voyage towards expressing sensations of sight. There are two interactive and immersive new media artworks that were developed as a part of this creative exploration. “Zeugen” uses thirty-two human-cast robotic faces and a face tracking system to track the movements of viewers in a gallery space. “Mind Mirror” is an electronic artwork that uses stereoscopic and stroboscopic audiovisual phenomenon (intermittent photic-stimulation) to cause the viewer's mind to create involuntarily visual hallucinations. The result is an experiential event propelling the viewer into a state of visual euphoria. My creative process (methodology) is presented in the form of a personal narrative outlining the practical motivations that have guided my work and I situate the work within a historical and theoretical discourse.

abstract: Vision

abstract: Interaction Design


title: A Hyperlocal Manifesto: Exploring Hyperlocal Publics Through the Little Mountain Housing Project, Social Video Advocacy and Web Documentary

contributor: Vaisbord, David (David Vaisbord) (author)

format:
60 p.
electronic

subject: Documentary films--Digital media--Democracy--Social movement--Media--Film

abstract: I launched The Little Mountain Project as a response to the eviction and destruction of a social housing community in Vancouver, Canada. Utilizing hybrid digital media practices, my work encourages citizens to meet and participate in democratic processes. The main components of this new media exploration consist of a blog and video archive, a multi-platform signage project, and a collaborative community web history project. This paper documents the development of a methodology for an innovative documentary practice – a hyperlocal web-based strategy – to empower a counter public and to facilitate community dialogue around rapidly evolving civic processes. I situate my practice within a critique of neoliberalism, the idea of the “public sphere,” and the history of advocacy and activist filmmaking in Canada, in particular, the National Film Board of Canada’s “Challenge for Change Program,”1 a ground-breaking experiment in the use of film for the purpose of social activism. The Little Mountain Project aims  to explore new forms of social, political, and cultural production within emergent practices  enabled by web-based media, which propose new ways to facilitate dialogue within the public sphere.


title: Animating the Frenzy of the Possible Via Internet Collaboration and the Super Mario Afterlife

subject: Animation--Cinematography--Computer games--Experimental--Postmodernism--Philosophy--Video games

abstract: The research found in this paper poses inquiries into postmodern animation in relation to the aesthetic effects of stylistic constraints. I propose that contemporary consumers of animation possess an inherent awareness of the limitations of what can and will be depicted based purely on their knowledge of what is technically possible. Using philosopher Gilles Deleuze's concept of the virtual and striated space, and contemporary theorist Jean-Luc Comolli's understanding of the ways in which technologies are adopted and abandoned, I introduce the idea of the “frenzy of the possible.” This idea pertains to a state wherein a viewer facing a work that adheres to a singular, unified style experiences a level of comfort that is based on limitation. This paper and its accompanying animation Pratfall Origarch are investigations into hybridity that by contrast function primarily through a process of discomforting the viewer. By combining diverse styles such as hand-drawn and computer assisted animation, green-screen live action footage, video game hacking, and more, I have crafted an aesthetic which establishes expectations just long enough to subvert them.  In addition to Deleuze’s and Comolli’s concepts, I draw on the importance of community-based online collaboration in the context of a long history and sustained knowledge of gaming. To this end, the Grand Guignol theatre's combination of violence and comedy is contrasted with the modern examples of the Electric Retard webcomic and the animated program Xavier: Renegade Angel. Further to this, the act of playing the video game Super Mario Bros. is reflected upon as a way of demonstrating the striated virtual (a concept developed in this paper), and the role of intuition in learning how to use technology for artmaking. Instability, as a concept and as a method, is both the point of arrival and departure for investigation.


title: Figurations of Fungi: An Exploration of Ethology, Emergence, and Expression in Creative Practice

format:
41 p.
electronic

subject: Art, Modern--Nature (Aesthetics)--Philosophy--Art and science--Fungi

abstract: This paper explores creative practice as a form of embodied, situated, and material research that generates the potential for change. It examines the work of philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari as well as contemporary feminist theorists Moira Gatens, Genevieve Lloyd and Rosi Braidotti. Their philosophical position on bodies, compositions and emergence counters the dystopian views of catastrophe and death that are so pervasive in posthumanist discourses. Holly Schmidt articulates an engagement with ethological practices that seek to deterritorialize the disciplinary boundaries of art and science. These practices take up the composition of bodies, their speed and slowness, and ability to affect and be affected. Ethology involves creative actions that recompose relations. In meeting that complexity, Schmidt suggests there is potential to recompose contemporary technoculture while developing new ways of making and being in the world that meet the complexity of global issues. Schmidt looks to the figuration of fungi as a form of expression for its rich potential to create other possible worlds. Being neither plant nor animal fungus has created much debate and confusion in the history of taxonomic classification. It is the many ways in which fungi evade the logic of Western classification and organization that suggests it is a figuration worth exploring. Fungi are explored through Schmidt’s creative engagement with a variety of communities. Schmidt’s work varies, as does her medium of expression, which includes the spatial practice of walking, with the relational practices of coordinating social events, and the architecturally influenced practices of building forms for interaction.

abstract: Installations

abstract: Modern art

abstract: Science

abstract: Nature

abstract: Biology


title: Emergent Value(s) of Giving Through Object Matter

format:
120 p.
electronic

subject: Communication--Found objects (Art)--Ceremonial exchange--Craigslist.com (Firm)--Found objects--Gifts--Internet advertising

subject: Vancouver (B.C.)

abstract: As an artist and writer, I am interested in “object matter,” a term I use to signify how objects are mediated through visual and textual languages. In my thesis, I explore used, everyday objects, things no longer wanted or needed by their owners, by examining ways people give them away to strangers. In particular, I have chosen to the study the use of everyday language by people who give away their used goods through the online network Craigslist Vancouver “Free Stuff.” The three central question of my exploration are: How do people give to strangers? What kinds of value(s), if not monetary value, could these objects have in their being given away? What is at stake in these free offerings? I approach these questions through language, suggesting that what is offered is not only the objects themselves but their “object matter,” articulated through the written and spoken gestures of giving towards the other. I study how people describe their used goods and how they position their offerings both online and offline. These gestures reveal emergent values that may imply an obligation to use or receive these objects in certain ways, forming temporary yet sustaining bonds between strangers. Various visual components produced out of the research will be discussed along with an exploration of the central ideas of tactics, emergent value(s) and object matter. The collected objects and some of the components of the visual documentation culminate into a two-part installation that is part documentation and part participatory event. Methodologically, the research borrows from sociological examinations of the gift economy and Michel de Certeau's ideas of “tactics” as everyday practices of singular forms of production. The conceptual poetics of Marcel Duchamp who significantly introduced language into the visual arts through the readymade is discussed. Furthermore, language as “indirect discourse” informs how I interpret the ways of speaking and writing that poignantly illustrate how people in Craigslist “Free Stuff” value and give away their used things.

abstract: Internet

abstract: Language


title: Adventures in Stereo: Stereoscopic Cinema in the Age of a Digital Observer

format:
72 p.
electronic

subject: 3-D films--Experimental--Film--Video Art--Installations--Stereoscope

abstract: This paper represents an historical and cultural context for the research and studio work achieved during the 2 year MAA in Media Arts at ECUAD. The studio component is an exploratory engagement within emerging processes of digital stereoscopic production and alternative uses of new and available tools. The ultimate goal of the research is focused on a process discovering how to work within the stereo space, developing tools for cinematic applications and collecting this knowledge into an arsenal of stereo communication techniques outside of the methods dictated by a dominantly orthostereoscopic understanding of 3D imagery. In order to position the tools, possibilities and subsequent impact of stereoscopic media within current Western culture, the paper reflects upon Jonathan Crary’s concept of the observer and Giorgio Agamben’s apparatus. The apparatus and the observer are concepts that aid in understanding stereo media’s place in history and its re-emergence in the digital present. The studio research project manifests in a stereo film/installation hybrid, which exemplifies the ideas and links between the apparatus and observer. Included in the thesis are descriptions of key influential artists and filmmakers, such as Phillippe Baylaucq, Michael Snow, Wim Wenders, Janet Cardiff and James Turrell. These descriptions are paired with insight into the production and aesthetic qualities of the thesis project to help the reader better understand the scope of applied knowledge gained through the research project, as well as the creative impetus behind it. Alongside the contemporary examples and influences is an historical account of the Spottiswoode Brothers and the pivotal Telecinema festival. The historical account demonstrates how this thesis project and current stereo practitioners are still working to create a stereo language for dimensional films.


title: Technological Visibility

format:
50 p.
electronic

subject: Photography--Technology--Sensuality in art--Visual perception

abstract: This thesis reports on an exploration of technology and the nature of visual perception through the medium of a flatbed scanner. Natural laws and sensuality inform the content and the methodology used in the construction of artworks that enlarge and engage the viewer's experience of hyper-realistic printed images. The exploration of natural law consists of defining the role of opposition in nature. The terms Dionysian and Apollonian as applied to Nature by the author Michael Pollan are examined as analogues of the intersection of Nature and Technology. Five categories of opposites – atmospheric, internal, objective, time-based, and material – are explored in scanner-based images. The exploration of sensuality is expressed through the subject matter of the scanner-based images. Using the scanner, mundane and humble plant material is elevated in status and takes on symbolic and metaphoric meaning beyond its existence in the natural world. The exploration of technology uses the scanner as a disrupting medium in image production. By reducing, removing and replacing components so it cannot function optimally, the scanner leaves evidence of its role in image-making on the image itself. Analogies with responses to externally imposed stress in the natural world are explored, as is the concept of the artist as cyborg.The exploration of visual perception draws on the work of artists Uta Barth and Wolfgang Tillmans, who use different methods to divert the viewer's attention away from the primary subject matter of an image and onto that which is absent or overlooked (in the case of Barth) or the mechanics of image creation (in the case of Tillmans). The work of both artists is used as a touch-point for a series of scanner-based image explorations. Theorists Jeanne Randolph and Jonathan Crary provide a foundation for discussion of the space between the viewer and a photographic image, as well as the psychological and physiological engagement of the viewer wrought by the use of a technological medium. Plans for future projects that extend and expand the ideas presented in this thesis are also discussed.


title: Multimedia Ritual Performance: Dialogues Between Cinema and Korean Shamanism

contributor: Cho, (Alex) Young-Hwa (Alex Young-Hwa Cho) (author)

format:
65 p.
electronic

subject: Experimental films--Performance art--Multimedia (Art)--Digital storytelling

abstract: “Mu-dang's Cinematic Shrine” is a multimedia installation that is the result of a convergence of two different methodologies and explorations: cinema and Muism - Korean shamanism. This convergence makes apparent the recent divergence of forms and themes in my art practice since beginning my MAA Program. My thesis essay investigates three main concepts: 1. how medium and message are integrated to evoke a sense of numinosity and the liminality associated with the life-death continuum; 2. what my role is, as an artist, in creating a transformative space and language; and 3. how the space and form of my cinematic installation enhances audience interactivity, vis-à-vis the conventional cinematic apparatus. For this inquiry, I juxtapose the role of an artist to that of a Korean shaman, a mu-dang. My role as a media artist mimics a mu-dang’s spiritual role and ability: the channeling and creation of perceptual transformation and the facilitating of alternative storytelling. This idea and practice is informed by the experimental and sociopolitical cinema of Trinh T. Minh-ha and the experimental multi-media installation, performance, and theories of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. Their theoretical investigations and writing on time, space, memory, identity, and language have influenced and inspired my own critical thinking and media production. This thesis essay intertwines their practice and theory with my own art practice in a ritualistic multi-media exploration.

abstract: Digital media

abstract: Folklore

abstract: Film


title: What Happyns

subject: Documentary films--Skateboarding--Ethnology--Happiness--Vancouver (B.C.)--Lawn bowling

subject: Positive psychology

abstract: My thesis project, titled What Happyns, is a video documentary, approximately 45 minutes in length, comprised largely of interviews recorded with attendees at the Stanley Park Lawn Bowling Club and the Plaza Skateboard Park, both located in Vancouver, B.C. This paper identifies three documentary film histories—the ethnographic, the quotidian and the essay— that have informed my project. A number of definitive filmic works within these histories are discussed in relation to the project, most importantly Chronique d’un été and Le joli mai. Other important context is provided by the work of Errol Morris and Ross McElwee, as well as by Michael Apted’s Up Series. The role of the interview in documentary film is examined, as are the key concepts around which What Happyns was constructed: our collective conception of happiness, especially its recent manifestation in the field of Positive Psychology, and Laura Rascaroli’s notion of the “interstitial space” as it is created by the deployment of voice-‐over in an essay film.  Emphasis is lent throughout to the emergent process often involved in the making of documentary films, and the thesis project is viewed, in conclusion, mainly as an essay film.

abstract: Subculture


title: Objects Wrapped in Dreams Wrapped in Objects

subject:
Installations (Art)
Sound in art
Video art
Smartphones
Performance art
Motherhood

abstract: An exploration of dreams is a recurring source of inspiration for my practice. Coupled with observations from lived, waking experience, dreams offer another layer and resource for making art. Inspired by my dreams the balloon is used as a material to explore the entanglement between waking life and the dream, between multifarious vantage points within the reality of everyday experience. I address some of the history of weather balloon as a scientific object and contemporary artists that use this artifact in their own art practices. The dream is embraced as an artist tool as is the cell phone. Aspects of contemporary thinking on objects informs the processed based research namely object-oriented ontology and vibrant matter. Some understanding of how relational aspects are privileged in vibrant matter start to emerge. Throughout this thesis I explore material practices in relation to new technology namely the weather balloon and the smartphone. In addition to philosophical ideas on objects, I investigate this through theoretical constructs on improvisation to develop bridging strategies to explain how the body reacts and responds to the beautiful agency and power of objects.


title: First Steps

format:
38 p.
electronic

subject: Autobiography--Documentary films--Disability studies--Sociology of disability

abstract: This paper examines the development of my thesis documentary film, First Steps, which portrays my experiences with a progressive disability, and situates my work in relation to different theoretical approaches to the representation of disability in film. The normative western construction of disability derives from legal, scientific, and medical models that tend to focus on repairing the handicap or curing the underlying physiological illness. This model of representing disability figures prominently in mainstream American film, and I discuss a number of the prevailing cinematic stereotypes about disability to expose how film helps to shape social perceptions about disability. I will consider these dominant discourses alongside alternative humanistic and socio-political discussions found in critical disability studies to consider how both discourses produce expressive possibilities, but also have their own limitations. Working through these different theoretical approaches in relation to the history of American film, I will explain how my own documentary negotiates both models of disability in an effort to find a balance between them and produce an authentic narrative of how I have experienced the onset of multiple sclerosis.

abstract: Disability

abstract: Autoethnography

abstract: Film

abstract: Health Literacy


title: Sensory Cards: Fostering Empathy and Connection within Community Groups

contributor: Gomes Franca, Natália (Natália Gomes Franca) (author)

format:
88 p.
electronic
electronic

subject: Design Empathy Collaboration

abstract: The ability to work and collaborate with different groups has become an essential skill in our highly connected and complex society. We face challenges today that cannot be fixed by a single individual and we need to learn how to collaborate on a much greater scale. People are starting to see the value in building communities based on strong relationships and connections, and yet working together is not always easy.  This thesis project navigates from the broader context of community building to the local and personal space of relationships. It explores the potential of dialogic artifacts as a means for building empathy and connection within community groups. A series of reflective and exploratory projects were conducted in order to facilitate immersion into the topic and the access to tacit, intuitive knowledge. Psychologists and group facilitators were engaged through participatory design methods and brought important insights on how artifacts can support empathy in human interactions.  is research led to the Sensory Cards, a set of visual and tactile cards with suggested guidelines designed to facilitate the communication—access, expression and understanding—of feelings and emotions in community groups.

abstract: Submitted in partial fulfillment for the degree of Master of Design.

abstract: Design for empathy

abstract: Community building

abstract: Collaborative design

abstract: Conversation and dialogic artifacts


title: The Birthday

format:
51 p.
electronic

subject: Autobiography--Animation--Identity--Emigration and immigration--Fairy tales

abstract: This MAA paper examines the relationship between my animation and character design artwork and the autobiographic elements that inform these works. I will document my evolving creative process as I worked on a semi-autobiographic fairy tale called The Birthday, a  ctionalized self portrait that depicts my mental state in dealing with an identity crisis I experienced as a new Canadian immigrant in the mid 1980s. This paper will draw parallels between the fairy tale I created and my personal experience by touching on cultural and social issues that have shaped my philosophy. I will reference authors whose analytical works on fairy tales and myths have informed my storytelling process, in particular Bruno Bettelheim and Joseph Campbell. I will also examine the role of the subconscious and the Jungian archetypes in my fairy tale and at the same time explore possible connections between my own character and the characters that I have designed. The scope of this paper does not allow for an in-depth analysis of my book project, but by introducing some psychological concepts used by Jung, Bettelheim and Campbell in their discussion of myths and fairy tales into my work, I hope to gain a better understanding of my creative process, which will help build the foundation for my future projects. Finally, I also want to reach out to my audience by highlighting universal themes that the project addresses.

abstract: Autoethnography

abstract: Film

abstract: Cinematography

abstract: Folklore


title: Empowering Design Attributes for Body-Worn Rehabilitation Devices. A Case Study: From a Shoulder Support for Women to Shoulderwear

format:
96 p.
electronic

subject: Biometry--Health promotion--Physical therapy--Rehabilitation--Industrial design

abstract: Empowerment is an important approach in physiotherapy, and is shown to have many benefits for clients in their rehabilitation process. This thesis considers whether the concept of empowerment can be extended from physiotherapy to the design of body-worn rehabilitation products. This study reviews current developments in the design of rehabilitation products as well as design theories that relate to empowerment. A research probe was conducted in order to understand if body-worn or carried artifacts are understood by wearers to impart a sense of empowerment, and what specific design attributes might most effectively convey empowerment. Findings were analyzed and documented as empowerment principles. A case study was developed to explore the application of these empowerment principles to the design of a shoulder support for women. This case study includes functional development through biomimetic design in order to determine baseline functional specifications. In the development of the product, research findings influenced the design such that it evolved from the conventional rehabilitation approach of “shoulder support” to a collection of concepts for Shoulderwear. This thesis demonstrates that feeling empowered is important to wearers of rehabilitation products, and that empowerment guidelines can be successfully applied to design artifacts.

abstract: Physiotherapy

abstract: Body

abstract: Empowerment

abstract: Health

abstract: Human body

abstract: Rehabilitation


title: Mend + Transform + Renew: Reactivating and (re)imagining pre and post consumer textile waste

contributor: Soucie, Katherine (Katherine Soucie) (author)

format:
90 p.
electronic

subject: Synesthesia in art--Transformation--Factory and trade waste--Clothing and dress

subject: Textile industry

subject: Repairing

abstract: The intention of this paper is to identify mending as an artistic practice able to function as a tool for creation, transformation and (re)imagination. The discussion will contextualize my practice as an artist and designer working with pre and post consumer textile waste in relation to mending as an artistic practice. From the tools I utilize to the artisanal applications I explore, Vancouver has influenced my use of mending as tool for investigating, creating and (re)imagining discarded clothing and textile industry waste. My research uncovers how mending contributes to the construction of identity through a non-consumption based practice where I focus upon reactivating and transforming the discarded, devalued and obsolete. I position my thesis in alignment with Otto Von Busch’s theory on Fashion Hactivism alongside artists such as Michael Swaine, Liz Collins, Eleanor Ray, Jonnet Middleton and TomofHolland. As part of the growing discourse surrounding mending, transformation and reactivation, my role as a mending practitioner draws upon the ability to tune in, observe and reverse engineer from a set of limited resources and circumstances where I can (re)imagine and allow the invisible to become visible.

abstract: Textiles

abstract: Fashion

abstract: Mending

abstract: Process


title: The Stories Ghosts Tell

contributor: Campbell, Peg (Peg Campbell) (thesis advisor)

format:
46 p.
electronic
electronic

subject:
Biopolitics
Art and motion pictures
Race identity

abstract: In order to justify continual violence, inequitable distributions of power as well as hierarchical states of being, a carving of bodies has been perpetrated. Bodily constructions and delineations of human, nature, gender, race, sexuality, class and the notion of identity itself have confined ‘Beings’ as materials and resources to be extracted and destroyed. In the North American context of being marked Black female, I want to understand how I can survive and transcend these forces that operate internally and externally. The method through which my investigation takes shape borrows from Afrofuturism. Afrofuturism imagines a space where the African Diaspora is a thriving, empowered, regenerating positionality in parallel with other peoples. Within its discourses there are two streams which I take up in my art practice that I believe make this future possible. The first is my graduate thesis installation, which was heavily influenced by hauntology, a concept which recognizes that we are always haunted by the past; and the other, my interim and directed study installations which were informed by biopolitical theory, a body of work which unpacks what it means to be human alongside social constructions of power. Blending past and contemporary filmic devices and materials to investigate contingencies of identity, my intention is to speak from my own peculiarities to point to larger systems in operation. Avery Gordon writes that, “... haunting, unlike trauma by contrast, is distinctive for producing a something-to-be-done.” Through analogue and digital film installations, I trouble notions of ‘past’; and through materials and process, I articulate traumas of blackness and gender as well as demonstrate that these constructions are not fixed, but instead fluid and in constant states of forming and reforming in relation to environmental factors such as era, location, power and control. Afrofuturism calls for a joining of critical and utopian discourses embedded in Afrodiasporic experiences. I act to reframe the past and present narratives to imagine utopias, mapped but not inhibited by race and gender. My aim is not to erase difference, simply to dismantle oppressions legitimized through social constructs that systemically award inferiority or superiority.

abstract: In support of the fulfillment of Low residency Master of Applied Arts degree in Media Arts.

abstract: Analogue film

abstract: Afrofuturism

abstract: Hauntology

abstract: Blackness


title: A Naked Lunch with the Modernists: Painting as Practice

subject: Cézanne--Artists--Modernism--Painting--Creative writing--Writing--Modern art

abstract:
This thesis project intersects between both formal and creative writing styles that explore the potential of the written language to generate and promote material practice. Contextualizing contemporary
painting both art historically and opening it up to broader range of influences such as memory systems and creative writing, all help to support my notion of painting as an open thinking model that acts as an oblique reply to both the everyday and art history. The thesis traces the reductive Modernist agenda with a particular focus on Australian art history, Dadaist diagrams and Modernist painting from 1958 to 1965; as an enquiry into the semiotics of gesture and the narrative potential of mark making. Working towards Post Modernism and how this has opened up the creative possibilities of painting now
outside a critical and stylistic agenda. Through intersecting existing historical practices with more contemporary painters, I aim to suggest that painting is a practice that frequently looks to the past for answers, which subsequently leads my enquiry into various modes of appropriation Key notions through out the text are painting as a diagram and network, with Cezanne’s technique of ‘Passage shape,’ which I argue has had transitive effect throughout the course of modern art up to more contemporary practices such as Jutta Koether, who enacts the behavioral passage between objects in a range of multidisciplinary crossovers. This leads the enquiry into the transitive potential of animating these passage spaces with the semiotics of gesture and mark making.


title: Generative Art as Experiment

format:
53 p.
electronic

subject: Art and science--Mechanical drawing--Robotics--Appropriation

abstract: This thesis investigates my generative art (1) practice with mechanical drawing machines, for which the relationship between humans and technology provides the larger context. The comparison between machinic and software-based generative art systems acts as a starting point for reflections on technology in general. Producing pictures with self-made, commissioned or appropriated drawing machines, my practice aims at subverting the instrumental nature of technology, and emphasizing its anthropological dimension (2). The practice focuses on inaccuracies, errors and deviations from my attempts at control. The glitch (a short lived, unexpected disturbance) is discussed as a way of highlighting the production process of a picture. My research explores the media-specific Eigensinn (obstinacy) of drawing machines, a synergetic force colliding with the intentions of myself as a human creator. Calling up technological history, I argue that making art with technology is a paradoxical endeavour, which I embrace as a way of investigating subjectivity in my aesthetic decisions and art making. The emotion of surprise, resulting from this collision, is presented as my primary motivator for engaging with generative art. The seeming autonomy of generative art systems brings up questions about the authorship (3) of such practices. These are contextualized with other practices less based on the hand of the artist than on the manipulation of symbolic entities,(4) e.g. readymades (Duchamp), and conceptual art (LeWitt). I draw a connection from my hands-off methodology to the scientific experiment, which runs without the interference of the scientist. My machine drawings are compared to scientific graphs and the artist studio is paralleled to the science laboratory (5). (1) Galanter, Boden and Edmonds (2) Heidegger (3) Irvin (4) Roberts (5) Latour

abstract: Drawing

abstract: Technology

abstract: Machines


title: Animation and Improvisation

contributor: Allemano, Luigi (Luigi Allemano) (author)

format:
91 p.
electronic

subject: Animation--Drawing--Film--Improvisation--Music

abstract: This paper is a discussion of the research I have undertaken in developing a process of audio-visual composition based in the methodologies of ‘direct animation’ and musical improvisation. The central thesis project is Improvisation no. 1: Cumulative Loops, a work that might be described as audio-visual music, consisting of hand-drawn image sequences and music generated together in a cumulative and improvisatory process. Additional studio works related to this thesis include Bagirmi Beat, a sound composition achieved through frame-by-frame mark-making on the optical track of film, and nine experimental Motion Studies that investigate the audio-visual relationship between hand drawn animation and sound. Innovations emerging from my studio experiments include the pantographic brush array and an accompanying system of paper ‘filmstrips’. While all of the works incorporate these analog tools and materials, they are essentially digital media, made with and presented on computers, speakers and video displays. Speaking to the convergence of visual art and music in digital media and the possibilities for an individual artist therein, the works invite the viewer-listener to consider the place of materiality and the hand-made in the digital age. My methodology is based upon the notion that the fundamental correlation between image and sound is time. Arbitrary transpositions between, for example, pitch and color are less important than establishing in my mark-making process the conditions under which a musician might improvise. These conditions and the activities engaged with therein become the primary work while the resulting media ‘objects’ remain as testaments to the act of improvisation. Through the production and discussion of these works I address the importance of drawing in the ontology of animation and I explain the significance of human gesture, mark making and empathy in my practice. Referencing contemporary philosophical thought in the emerging area of improvisation studies, I position my audio-visual compositions within the idiomatic traditions of jazz music. Navigating the contradictions between pre-determination, spontaneity, chance and control, I present a body of work that speaks to the apparent paradox of improvisation in animation.


title: Black Hole Theatre

format:
38 p.
electronic
electronic

subject:
Photography
Memory
Black holes (Astronomy)

abstract: This supporting thesis outlines a series of photographic works that attempt to map out and explore the physical surfaces of photographs and the spaces of interaction that open up when we encounter an image at the photograph’s surface. Many of the works draw heavily on the analogy of a black hole as a phenomenon which pulls in information from the world around it and forever preserves and conceals that information. Other works examine the kind of encounters we have within this space of interaction, using the physical photograph as an object to express self-reflectively and theatrically some of the ways in which photography functions. The works are discussed speculatively in terms of their relationship to modernism, minimalism, concrete photography and the theatre, citing relevant works from other artists where appropriate.

abstract: In support of the fulfillment of Low residency Master of Applied Arts degree.

abstract: Surface

abstract: Rubbing

abstract: Printing

abstract: Casting

abstract: Impression

abstract: Recording

abstract: Photo-based


title: Picking up the Threads: Materializing Family Histories

contributor: Sound Perich, Michelle (Michelle Sound Perich) (author)

format:
63 p.
electronic

subject: Cultural fusion and the arts--Textile crafts--Installations (Art)--Indigenous peoples--Aboriginal peoples

abstract: This research project explores family history, craft materials, and how Aboriginal women create meaning in the making of complex and beautiful functional objects such as Pow-wow regalia and quilts. I reference the history and evolution of regalia, beadwork and Aboriginal quilts as a means of examining hybridity as it relates to material and cultural forms. As part of my methodology, hybridity and authenticity will be discussed in relation to Homi Bhaba, James Clifford and Robert Young. Brian Jungen's use of mass-produced commodities in his work and Faith Ringgold's “story quilts” are examined in the context of my material practice. I examine Lori Blondeau and Sherman Alexie's critical use of humour and pop culture to explore Aboriginal self-identity. Feminist examinations of textile practices are related to quiltmaking and handicrafts. My own experience of motherhood and its impact on my art practice is detailed. Drawing from archival research and oral histories my own family history is threaded throughout the thesis as I recover lost histories and knowledge.

abstract: Culture

abstract: Indigenous

abstract: Hybridity

abstract: Installations

abstract: Craft


title: Line Studies: Standards and Postulates

format:
32 p.
electronic

subject:
Drawing--Conceptual art--Line
Drawing
Philosophy
History

abstract: This thesis essay examines a drawing discourse that is not defined by graphite on paper but rather by an axiomatic construction of space that entails a distinct and interwoven relation between line and surface. In order to examine this formal relationship between line and surface, and the conceptual repercussions, I will address relevant work from my own studio practice, theoretical discourse, contemporary examples and historical precedent. Specifically concentrating on Mel Bochner (and the conceptual drawing practices of the 1960s) Francis Alÿs and Robin Rhode. The lines considered here cut across grids, reposition objects and direct/obstruct the flow of bodies, they delineate space, cleaving an undefined surface into an object and a ground, and open spaces into bounded areas. Drawing then becomes an apparatus through which to think differently about the surface that is being marked, the world sustaining that mark. The work examined in this thesis has been distilled to lines and line-makers, basic elements and primary structures that can expand to other forms. Here drawing is seen not as a material, but as a stance out of which to make gestures affiliated with a medium that explicitly resists determination. This paper will outline the ambivalent or multi-valent nature of the line: vibrating continually, never being fully one thing or another, never fully mimetic or fully abstract. The work examined seeks to understand the structural nature of lines, how they delineate looking, acting, and create moments of transgression. This thesis asks: how can space be constructed along alternate base lines? And what changes when we are asked to look at the standard itself instead of being corralled into seeing along the standard?


title: Beloved Labours in Pink

contributor: Schuler, Jennifer (Jennifer Schuler) (author)

format:
85 p.
electronic

subject: Colour theory--Gender--Ritual--Popular culture

abstract: Beloved Labours in Pink, a praxis paper, is a form of colour study. It constitutes a critical look at how the cultural associations of the colour pink inform my studio work and its concern with my gender and body as an artist, domestic rituals as personal performances, and the recognition of labour within the space of the home. My aim is to provide a space with which to investigate how pink is a politically charged colour. To do this, I will be analyzing the role of pink in relation to colour theory, popular culture, gender studies, theories of aesthetics, and institutions of power.


title: Looking At This, I Notice That

contributor: Pederson, Håvard (Håvard Pederson) (author)

format:
40 p.
electronic

subject: Art--Criticism--Modern art--Philosophy

abstract: An artwork is made based on a personal hypothesis resting on the existing knowledge of the artist. This knowledge, whether from a case study within a theme the artist is researching or from his or her general understanding/reception of the world where he/she is working, will inevitably cause the artwork to be of a personal and subjective matter, regardless of the proposition or matter discussed in the work itself. With this in mind, the idea of an auto analysis of one’s work seems somewhat unproductive as one enters the analysis or critique of one’s work with the same knowledge or moral as the work was initially based. With this in mind my intention with this text was to create a paper that would be an opportunity to demonstrate something about my work and its context, rather than demonstrating my knowledge. By leaving the raw material of my sources as untouched as possible I hoped with this approach to present a process that would embody the sensation of my work, rather than the singular reading the rewriting and customization of the sources that a more formal paper would dictate. The footnotes, more informal in their structure than a conventional text, gave me the opportunity to more freely propose the plausible and temporal truths I am searching while escaping the traditional role of the author. The fragmented form of the paper also better reflected the conceptual aspects of my own practice, where the gaps of knowledge and unconnected dots inevitably are exposed just as openly as they are in this text.


title: Apocalypse Now, Maybe Later, or Even Sooner: The Bliss of Prediction

contributor: Sansom, Kathryn (Kathryn Sansom) (author)

contributor: Emily Carr University of Art and Design Graduate Studies (Degree granting institution)

subject: Anxiety--Health--Mental illness--Sculpture

abstract: This thesis begins with an explanation of my curiosity with anxiety, an interest that I have not only revisited from my previous practice, but is elemental to my lived reality. During the Masters candidacy at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, I have come to regard anxiety, and its counterpart panic, as a universal phenomenon as much as an individual affliction. The penchant for speculative anxiety – the tendency to anticipate doom – I argue, has been a reality of Western civilization since the first raindrops fell on Noahʼs holy construction. However, my thesis posits that this anxiety has an enhanced status in post-modern culture. The volatile reality of human civilization, as well as my own feelings of insecurity about the future, emanate from the trope of dystopian futures, popular depictions of apocalypse and post-apocalypses, as well as mediated news sources. I borrow and reprocess each of these in order to prepare for surviving any form of inexorable demise. Throughout the thesis, a number of works are analyzed, focusing on those that are quintessential to my current practice. Beginning with a description of dystopian references that have inspired my anxiety, I go on to describe ways in which speculative anxiety influences the construction and material reality of my work. The thesis distinguishes the utilitarian objects I make from dominant methods of manufacture, suggesting that their alterity of form, function, and fabrication enacts a dissensus -- introducing my own narrative and anxious state to the function of the pieces. The result of my artistic process thus far has consisted of material plans, models and sculptural objects. I conclude by describing forthcoming projects that are more performative by nature, and explain how they function as an additional level of immersion into my neurotic condition.


title: Inlak’esh Alaken [I am you, you are me] The Practice of Intercultural Engagement

contributor: Ambrosio Guerrero, Joanna Patricia (Joanna Patricia Ambrosio Guerrero) (author)

format:
56 p.
electronic

subject: Visual communication--Communication--Culture--Graffiti--Public space

abstract: As a designer, I have been identified as problem-solver, and rarely as problem-identifier. Designers have the opportunity to make a significant difference in society, and help in the development of conscious citizens from a wide range of cultures and languages. Intercultural interaction has increased within this globalized community, and it has become part of our lives. As a foreign communication designer, I have identified the importance of intercultural understanding, so we don’t alienate each other, and help develop shared experiences and collaborative projects when the same language, time and/or space may not be shared. This research study promotes the exploration of the process of a designer becoming a researcher and a thinker who collaborates within a multicultural community. It is an extended exploration of my previous experience collaborating for Mátika Magazine within an international group of designers, visual artists and writers. Therefore, it explores the different possibilities that hybrid design brings to a stream of creative disciplines, and how this diversity can be used as a tool to expand the relationship between space, culture and creativity. Within this paper, I describe the process and outcomes of developing the project Inlak’esh Alaken. This project took form with an event hosted at the same time in three different cities: Vancouver, Guadalajara and Los Angeles. By pushing further the possibilities of online network services, a live video of each event was streamed online and projected in each place. Within this project, I practice the research of different technologies to create urban art as an exploration of new ways to communicate between different cultures. Therefore, every participant in each city shared the same performance with the use of Graffiti Wall and Laser Tag. With the use of these tools of non-verbal communication, the participants were asked to interact with the others and communicate at the same time in different places.  Within this research and the process of my work, I aim to push the boundaries of traditional communication design, and share a body of knowledge that might help other communication designers in the process of becoming researchers and agents of social change. I share the process of becoming a visual journalist, and how we as designers can develop a method of documentation that accounts for the moods and concerns of our society, bridging different environments and translating the outcomes into seductive graphics of information.


title: My Grandfather the Cedar My Grandmother the Wool

contributor: Clifford, Rachelle (Rachelle Clifford) (author)

format:
44 p.
electronic

subject: Environmental sustainability--Design--Research--Coast Salish--British Columbia--Oral history--Basket making

abstract: This thesis is a personal journey that seeks to comprehend whether First Nations philosophies, specifically the Coast Salish can contribute to current research on sustainability. As a Coast Salish person, I initially set out to deepen my understanding of my own culture and ended up learning about the environment – simply because the two cannot be teased apart. My praxis explores stories based within Coast Salish knowledge of the land, seasonal harvesting, elder's guidance, and a traditional philosophy of respect. I weave this with Western philosophies centered on land ethic and systems thinking to create a space of hybridity. This thesis describes my new understanding of materiality in our interdependent world. The writing structure is woven and fragmented with different voices that reflect the academic, the poetic and the making. The writing is tangential, repetitive and circular, which mimics the structure of the traditional oral history of the Coast Salish people.

abstract: Storytelling


title: Alternative Workspaces: Changing Where + How People Work

format:
32 p.
electronic
electronic

subject:
Work environment
Modular design
Furniture

abstract:
The modern workspace is constantly evolving; what is in store for the future of how and where we work? Workspace creators need to provide a variety of activity landscapes intended for specific activities, and accessible to all. One size, one design, does not fit all!
This thesis explores possibilities of connecting generations by transforming the traditional workspace to accommodate the ever-blurring boundaries between the workspace, hospitality spaces and the home spaces with the infusion of sophisticated modularity. Four generations contribute to today’s work environment including Baby Boomers, Generation X, Generation Y and Post Millennials. All of these generations have different expectations, values and motivations about their work environments. How can we become attuned to this emerging generation of workspace users, who often have very different ideas about how work should get done? Moreover, this thesis analyzes the integration and emphasis of work/life balance, workspace flexibility and user wellbeing, reinforced ideas generated through an open design processes, and explores how co-creation can facilitate the diffusion of innovation within an organization’s common workspaces known as lounge space. This thesis builds upon an existing product portfolio of office furniture by implementing human centered design through co-creation, and finding inspiration for innovation through heuristic methodologies in order to inform design decisions. With an emphasis on workspace ideologies and theories, exciting propositions based on design principles and workspace psychology, such as the incorporation of sophisticated modularity, lounge-as-office principles, prioritizing play, and supporting working happy, provide interesting insights into this research. This collection of artifacts provides functional and flexible characteristics while being attractive enough to be enjoyed outside of workspaces.

abstract: Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Design

abstract: Wellbeing

abstract: Creative workspaces

abstract: Workspace culture

abstract: Work/life balance

abstract: Modular furniture

abstract: User choice

abstract: Open design


title: Expanded Everyday

contributor: Puyana Prieto, Rafael Fernando (Rafael Puyana Prieto) (author)

subject: Street signs--Digital media and culture--Computer art--Augmented reality--Visual communication

subject: Cities

subject: Urban ecology (Sociology)

abstract: [Expanded Everyday] Is a framework for augmentation of place that uses appropriation and digital interventions of unnoticed everyday objects, events, and memories collected through physical and conceptual explorations of urban space. My practice-based research departs with observations and explorations throughout urban space searching for an interventionist opportunity of unnoticed, unimportant, and forgotten everyday urban assets that belong to an everyday public dimension of the city. An always-present network of assets emerged from the visual language spoken by the city. These found assets are dismantled and re-purposed through visual experiments, and transmuted into parodistic digital appropriations, where their tangible nature blends into the digital realm through processes of hijacking and reconfiguration of their original function and purpose. I explore the confrontation of my work and the observers, the instant when they recognize the quotidian object in the artwork, and the one when later, makes them recognize the artwork in their quotidian experience. It is during that aftermemory where the political possibilities of my work are triggered in the observer's inner narrative. An interest in the city, a concern with its inhabitants, and an awareness of its potential as a site of transformative change began in 1999 as I fostered my artistic practice through experimentation in graphic design while developing an investigation about visual representation of popular culture in Bogotan society. I am setting a navigation point in the period where graphic design, art, digital media, the city, and the objects that live in its public space began to interact in a system of relations that have been evolving as important influences in my artistic practice since then and that are now formally developed in the context of this Master’s thesis project. The second chapter will revise the idea of the everyday as a subject of investigation, guided by the theoretical discussions developed in France during the fifties and sixties by authors such as Henri Lefebvre, Michel De Certeau, Guy Debord, and Georges Perec. I will revise the Situationist strategy of Derive and explore how the interruptions created in my work can open a political space for critical thinking and production of new meaning in contemporary urban life. The revision of the studio components of this thesis will begin with a brief analysis of two digital works inspired by the activist project Little Mountain Project (2012). In this analysis, I will review how a design commission for the project encouraged the production of a generative art piece inspired by the concept of disappearance, while at the same time opened a space for revising the tensions and crossings of the relation of art and design in my work, as well as the separation that I have imposed in my practice from graphic activism. Subsequently, this theoretical and historical material will be revised through the main body of work of my thesis project: Pedestrians Obey Your Signals, which operates alongside my definition of the everyday, and my understanding of the artwork as an interrupter in the quotidian perception of urban space. I will set in place the theories and ideas above exposed and revise in detail four animated works that compose this series.

abstract: Urban

abstract: Video art


title: Constructed Desire: Using Design to Address Notions of Contemporary Sexuality in the Western World

contributor: Ziereisen, Vivian Andrea (Vivian Andrea Ziereisen) (author)

contributor: Emily Carr University of Art and Design Graduate studies (Degree granting institution)

format:
50 p.
electronic
electronic

subject:
Sexuality & culture
Design

abstract: This body of work presents a series of design propositions that seek to address notions of contemporary sexuality in the Western world, particularly in urban North America and Europe. Our evolved sex and love drives  find themselves confronted with an ever-changing cultural landscape where sexual norms are enforced and underly- ing instincts are sometimes used for the advancement of agendas and financial gain. Critical theorists and designers translate and expose the existence and operations of ideology, patriarchy, and the unconscious. Using a ‘research through design’ approach and pulling from attitudes and methodologies found in the realm of ‘critical design’ I present a sequence of explorations that are meant to act as proposals, as vessels through which people can reach their own interpretations and opinions about the influence of media culture on how we think about sex, how we have it, and how we talk about it.

abstract: In support of the fulfillment of the degree of Master of Design at Emily Carr University of Art and Design.

abstract: Evolutionary Psychology

abstract: Human sexuality

abstract: Critical design

abstract: Research through design

abstract: Sex

abstract: Sexual scripting

abstract: Pornography


title: Design-Based Learning for the Elementary School Classroom

format:
136 p.
electronic

subject:
Education, Elementary
Education
Design

abstract:
As part of a two-year collaboration with over 100 students in grade 4-7 classrooms at Kenneth Gordon Maplewood School (KGMS), this thesis project introduced design-based learning as a new pedagogic approach for supporting children with learning differences. Design-based learning is the integration of design into classrooms as a means to support the learning of other subjects, skills and knowledge. It considers design as an approach to teaching and learning, not as its own subject of study.
There is growing recognition that our current educational methods and approaches need to equip children with important skills including critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and communication. The BC Ministry of Education is currently in the process of transforming the curriculum to emphasize the development of these skills as core competencies (BC Ministry of Education, 2015, p.8). The use of design as an approach to fostering these skills is gaining momentum in education discussions across North America. However, despite the growth of knowledge and research in the area of education reform, design continues to evade integration in mainstream K12 education due to a lack of available resources and training for teachers. This document outlines the process of developing such materials. Through observations, conversations and the results of a pre- and post-design assessment the classroom teachers at KGMS saw profound benefits to the use of design as an approach to learning. To facilitate this approach, resource materials were developed to support teachers and a design coaching model was introduced as a way to provide ongoing, sustained professional development for teachers in the area of design-based learning.

abstract: Pedagogy

abstract: Creativity

abstract: Teaching


title: Comic Arts: Approachable Means for Disseminating a Feminist Message on Aging

subject: Feminism--Graphic novels--Comic books, strips, etc.--Ageism--Aging

abstract: This supporting thesis attempts to argue for the use of comics and comic arts as an effective visual language with which to disseminate the question of female ageism (prejudice or discrimination on the basis of one’s age). Through familial and self-reflexive references, my hope is to bring attention to the ubiquitous yet undervalued loss of voice of the middle-aged woman by means of an art form that has historically been dismissed within the fine art world. Through minimal black and white line-work, 2D comic-art iterations are placed in the gallery as a representation of the struggle middle-aged women have endured for a place in contemporary Western society. While intersectional feminism attempts to include all races, economic and social demographics within feminist discourse, ageism has been a silently pervasive phenomenon.


title: Brain Trees

subject: Painting--Landscape painting--Landscapes--Trees--Brain--Forests

abstract: Through painting, I rely on non-visual sensory information recorded in the woods to inform aesthetic decisions. Research happens in the act of painting. All visual and written references inform the collection of source material, but research happens during the translation between lived experience and paint. When painting reveals meaning, looking at other artists paintings or subsequent readings about recently discovered themes can supplement the research and direct a new path of painted investigation, but can never replace painting. This document is a descriptive account of how my cognitive system translates sensorial energy observed in the woods into painting. In place of a table of contents, the adjacent map serves as a visual guide through the document with the three main headers becoming structural sections: Brain (pg. 04) ; Woods (pg. 14) ; Material (pg. 24). The rooted nature of this map better reflects the non-linear progression of thinking through painting utilized in my practice. Fictional and poetic references are included in this document with only an accompanying painting for context. These references have tangentially informed the production of paintings and are isolated for further interpretation and reflection alongside a finished painting.


title: Interpolated Editorial Design

subject: Layout (printing)--System design--Book design--Electronic books--Web applications

abstract: Established practices of editorial design for fiction and non-fiction primarily focus on the visual communication and curation of meaning to a user of a given text. This is usually accomplished via art direction, delivery platform, and overall form as defined by a designer. While within these parameters exist opportunities for designers to make significant interventions in a text, a text’s content proper is primarily defined by editors earlier in the book publishing process. According to this model, the relationship between editorial and design is vertical and linear in nature: editors handle initial publishing interventions in the text, while designers later intervene as facilitators of form and production. This thesis project challenges these established industry practices with regards to the publishing process of new editions of long-form literary classics: it defines new editorial roles for designers and proposes a collaborative and cyclical publishing process wherein the designer further defines the meaning of the text. Moreover, through consultation with professionals in literary education, extensive case studies, user group interviews and profiles, and experimental prototyping, this thesis defines new ways for designers to serve contemporary users of textual artifacts; these users engage in an increasingly multimedia environment of texts, images as texts, and texts as images. Prototyping of this project has yielded a new edition of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, and an editorial design system that the researcher calls Interpolated Editorial Design, or InterED.

abstract: Personal, noncommercial use of this item is permitted.


title: Seeing in the Dark: Investigating the Photographic Act, Object, and Experience

subject: Installations (Art)--Photography--Color photography--Processing

abstract: Through my practice of colour darkroom manipulations and site installation, I investigate the photographic act as a unique phenomenon, serving a visual practice that embraces iteration and futurity. Photographs are in their very nature a unique set of variables and limits fixed together to produce an image. They are the surface negotiating causality (through time and calibration) that allows a viewer to witness traces of the photographic act through an experience of a photographic object and site installation. This negotiation is located in the recursive synthesis of the photographic act, the photographic object, and the photographic experience. Throughout this thesis I articulate how a material practice such as my own addresses an embodied investigation of limits both in a darkroom process and in the installation of work.


title: Training Videos: Cornering Socio-Cultural Movement

subject: Sculpture--Performance art--Social norms--Movement, Aesthetics of--Surveillance

abstract: This thesis explores how the movement, presentation and interaction of the body are learned through one’s identifier; gender, culture, nationality, race, religion, and social class. Expected norms to one’s mannerisms and way of being in the world is determined and controlled by each of these identifiers. Through my practice-led-research with my body as a tool, I explore social norms which limit my agency over my haptic and intuitive embodied way of moving. With my Defence work, Subversive Training Videos, a diptych large-screen video installation with an unconventional bench, I aim to unlearn and challenge social norms linked to social behaviours.


title: The Visible and Not: A Filtered Conversation Between Light and Time

subject:
Virtual reality
Design process
Workplace communication
Creative ability
Problem solving

abstract: In this thesis, I explore material and conceptual conversations between the physical and the mystical, the seen and unseen, the visible and not. I outline personal embodied experiences with religious practices and within sacred spaces as a grounding framework for my practice, which has eventually generated drawing through glass. I am asking: how does the metaphysical manifest materially? This research is explored through studio work and theoretical contexts in relation to the phenomena of light as a spiritual experience as well as physical reality. First, I outline the methodological origins of my early work in this program in relation to explicit religious practices within the Protestant Christian tradition. This includes the ABSORPTION of the perception of light as a profound spiritual symbol and potent element of sacred spaces. Re-imagining and reinterpretation of stained glass windows serves as a catalyzing visual vocabulary for this research. I then explain a REFRACTION in my practice that occurs when material consideration is given to the physical properties of light in relationship to glass. This mindfulness of the interactional behaviors of these materials leads to a bending in my practice to focus on researching more specifically the relationship between light and time. Finally, DURATION emerges as a key component of studio research as the shifting of light through time is evidenced in large scale graphite drawings. Ultimately, this text documents my practice and research as a shifting and expanding exploration of the sublime moment in connection with personal subjective spiritual experiences and the multiplicity of time.


title: Inanimation

subject: Animation--Multi-channel video installations--Video art--Installations (Art)

abstract: My practice borrows from early material processes of animation. The tools and techniques I primarily use were developed for commercial entertainment but are now obsolete outside of education and experimentation. The demanding labor process of producing cel animation independently applies technical constraints to my practice and forces a close examination of motion. I find my technique of tracing acute changes in images to be generative because the action of drawing and redrawing creates unexpected and unnatural movements. The motion created by unedited hand-drawn animation is slippery and constantly appears on the verge of transformation. My animations are short compiled loops of subjects which endlessly repeat small gestures and actions. Animating compact loops creates a perpetual anticipation of change while always rejecting progression. The movement produced in my loops refuses classification under the dichotomy of still and moving and instead calls for a more complex understanding of motion. My looping animations are primarily made for non-theater settings like galleries and web-based settings. In the current internet landscape, time-based media are regularly encountered in perpetual forms like gifs or endlessly scrolling websites. These new forms recall a history of cinema and early cinema devices where emerging technologies restricted media viewing to short repeating clips. Linear timelines as well as beginnings and ends in media have become unfamiliar with the new pervasiveness of looped forms. Working within a late-capitalist context where political power and resistance seem to operate in terms of perpetuity, my work examines a complex kind of movement where endless motion and stillness are simultaneously depicted. My practice involves animating scenes where constrained depictions of movement, change and progress are complicated by unusual treatments of space and time.


title: Exploring Noise as Information

subject: Copy art--Glitch art--Noise--Machines in art

abstract: My art practice is based on the study of machines. Instead of focusing on how machines usually work, I discover and explore the noise of machines – both visually and aurally. In my work, I use a photocopier to scan and print the same image repeatedly, which results in the original image becoming distorted and abstracted with noise. This work was initially influenced by the distorted homework paper handouts I regularly received at the school in China as a child – many of which were nearly illegible. In my practice, I explore the idea of noise as information. To help provide background to this work, I discuss three main aspects: glitch art, the actor-network theory, and how it connects to my work. Through my studio projects I have explored how noise, which is often viewed as an unwanted by product, can be used as the main content of a piece of work. Each form of communication technology has its own types of noise, which has its own aesthetic and style – and my hope is that my projects highlight the beauty and texture of noise that is usually only considered in a negative way.