College of Arts & Humanities
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations.
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Item The Home We Can Never Leave(2023) Richardson-Deppe, Charlotte R; Keener, Cy; Art; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Growing up, I performed aerial arts in a circus. In the circus, a web of interdependence keeps you off the ground—the tightness of your grip, the strength of your friend holding you up, the trust in an apparatus to hold your weight. In my own body now, I feel the residual stretch, tension, and ache the circus left in me—remnants of bodies pushing through pain, defying gravity to hold one another up. Via soft sculpture and performance, I negotiate the body as a site of both liberating autonomy and confining oppression.Item Finally, Fairies!: A Study in Hauntological Choreography(2022) Koepke, Tristan; Portier, Kendra; Dance; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)“Finally, Fairies!: A Study in Hauntological Choreography” is the written thesis that documents the creative research, development, and critical reflection of my dance production Finally, Fairies!, a requirement of the M.F.A. in Dance at the University of Maryland, College Park. Finally, Fairies! premiered March 11-13, 2022, at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center's Dance Theatre. In outlining the process from ideation to performance, I illuminate my personal history and artistic lineage in dance performance and choreography. I consider my choreographic impulses and choices in relationship to hauntology, a concept given name by Jacques Derrida and expanded upon by contemporary theorists such as Mark Fisher, Jack Halberstam, and Merlin Coverley. I explore hauntological moods, methodologies, Vaporwave music, and emergent forms of composition that involve both improvisation and choreography. Ultimately, I offer close readings of Finally, Fairies! to further expose what the performance proposed, as well as develop and trouble formulations of presence and embodiment through an insistence on spectrality and indeterminacy.Item REBORN IN ULTRAMARINE(2017) Wohrer, Dominique Andree; Sham, Foon V; Art; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Because of my personal history, I express myself through color, the language of the non-verbal. Ultramarine means beyond the sea, a reference to the foreign origin of lapis lazuli……….The thesis discusses the idea of color in sculpture, and its impact on the brain………….Item Are Videogames Art?(2016) Rough, Brock; Levinson, Jerrold; Philosophy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My dissertation defends a positive answer to the question: “Can a videogame be a work of art? ” To achieve this goal I develop definitions of several concepts, primarily ‘art’, ‘games’, and ‘videogames’, and offer arguments about the compatibility of these notions. In Part One, I defend a definition of art from amongst several contemporary and historical accounts. This definition, the Intentional-Historical account, requires, among other things, that an artwork have the right kind of creative intentions behind it, in short that the work be intended to be regarded in a particular manner. This is a leading account that has faced several recent objections that I address, particular the buck-passing theory, the objection against non-failure theories of art, and the simultaneous creation response to the ur-art problem, while arguing that it is superior to other theories in its ability to answer the question of videogames’ art status. Part Two examines whether games can exhibit the art-making kind of creative intention. Recent literature has suggested that they can. To verify this a definition of games is needed. I review and develop the most promising account of games in the literature, the over-looked account from Bernard Suits. I propose and defend a modified version of this definition against other accounts. Interestingly, this account entails that games cannot be successfully intended to be works of art because games are goal-directed activities that require a voluntary selection of inefficient means and that is incompatible with the proper manner of regarding that is necessary for something to be an artwork. While the conclusions of Part One and Part Two may appear to suggest that videogames cannot be works of art, Part Three proposes and defends a new account of videogames that, contrary to first appearances, implies that not all videogames are games. This Intentional-Historical Formalist account allows for non-game videogames to be created with an art-making intention, though not every non-ludic videogame will have an art-making intention behind it. I then discuss examples of videogames that are good candidates for being works of art. I conclude that a videogame can be a work of art, but that not all videogames are works of art. The thesis is significant in several respects. It is a continuation of academic work that has focused on the definition and art status of videogames. It clarifies the current debate and provides a positive account of the central issues that has so far been lacking. It also defines videogames in a way that corresponds better with the actual practice of videogame making and playing than other definitions in the literature. It offers further evidence in defense of certain theories of art over others, providing a close examination of videogames as a new case study for potential art objects and for aesthetic and artistic theory in general. Finally, it provides a compelling answer to the question of whether videogames can be art. This project also provides the groundwork for new evaluative, critical, and appreciative tools for engagement with videogames as they develop as a medium. As videogames mature, more people, both inside and outside academia, have increasing interest in what they are and how to understand them. One place many have looked is to the practice of art appreciation. My project helps make sense of which appreciative and art-critical tools and methods are applicable to videogames.Item Rilke's Russian Encounter and the Transformative Impact on the Poet(2014) Finney, Victoria; Beicken, Peter U; Germanic Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Russian culture had a pivotal role in the development of Rainer Maria Rilke's poetic perception and evolution. As late as 1922, Rilke emphatically claimed that Russian culture made him into what he is. Decades earlier, during his visits to Russia in 1899 and 1900, Rilke encountered many Russians from different walks of life: writers, artists, intellectuals and ordinary folk. Having immersed himself in the study of Russian language, literature, visual arts and religious ritual, Rilke prepared himself for a most intensive acculturation of Russia as a cultural other. This cultural encounter often has been critiqued as shallow and tainted by the poet's preconceived Western ideas. In contrast, by examining opposing critical views, this study investigates, interdisciplinarily and from the perspective of transculturation, how three central concepts of Rilke - poverty, love, and the artist's role - were substantially transformed by his absorption of Russian cultural and literary discourses. Russia is defined here as a `representational space,' employing Henri Levebvre's concept of geographical space consisting of both physical attributes and imaginary symbols. Using Wilhelm Dilthey's concept of `lived experience', the study approaches Rilke's Russian encounter as a holistic intercultural experience on both conscious and unconscious levels. Incorporating these theoretical aspects into a modified concept of transculturation, the study transcends the question of accuracy of Rilke's Russian depictions so often raised in biographical studies that insist on positivistic factuality. Instead, approached transculturally, Rilke's Russian encounter highlights the transformative changes that the poet's subjective perceptions and poetic development underwent. This is enhanced by the references to and analyses of Rilke's works informed by his Russian encounter. Most significantly, Rilke's transculturation as informed by his transformative Russian encounter generates the development of the concept of a compassionate imagination based on the idea of universal interconnectedness. This fostered Rilke's unique view of the individual as an integral part of a universal unity, by which the individual is considered inherently worthy regardless of limiting attributes such as social class or gender. This perception channeled Rilke's idea that the tragedy of the poor and the root of modern inability to love are to be found in the constant construction of identities imposed on an individual by others. For Rilke, after his Russian encounter, art's purpose was to create awareness of the individual's place in the universal unity.Item Fragments of Memories(2012) Booker, Michael Andrew; Lozner, Ruth; Art; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Quilt making, in its simplest form, is the taking of fragments from various sources and putting them together to form a new symbol that gives new meaning to those fragments, collectively. This thesis discusses my incorporation of the language of quilt making in my work, transforming its' ideals to reflect on issues and experiences that occur within families and communities, and to make quilt making cross the line from craft to fine art.Item Unveiling the Inner Self(2008-05-15) Chishty, Mahwish Kamran; Ruppert, John; Art; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Contradiction between the visible (zahir) and the veiled (baatin) creates this dialog of what we see and what the reality holds within; "They find as what they seek..." I have found my secret hide-outs, the Sanctuaries as my divine peace and every time I am in contact with them, I reveal myself onto myself. My early life experiences of not settling down in one place and moving from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan and later to America have left me with this sense of homelessness. In order to find connections between my roots, and myself, I started building my own comfort spaces within the spaces that were available at that time. By allowing my viewers to interact with the sculptural installations,I invite them to explore the concept of self-actualization and self-realization. For the past two years I have been investigating Kufic calligraphic fonts in my artwork. In the tradition of Sufism, the whirling and spinning helps one to know how to travel into the presence of the Divine, purify one's inward from filth, and beautify it with a variety of praiseworthy traits.Item Thomas Satterwhite Noble (1835-1907): Reconstructed Rebel(2007-05-09) Fleming, Tuliza Kamirah; Promey, Sally; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Thomas Satterwhite Noble was a Southerner, a member of slave-owning family, a confederate soldier, and an artist who painted history paintings relating to slavery and freedom in the United States. Between 1865 and 1870, Noble created a series of paintings that directly confronted white America's ambivalent feelings with regard to the issues of slavery, emancipation, and integration--earning him the moniker "reconstructed rebel." The American Slave Mart, 1865 was the first monumental treatment of a slave auction by an American painter and effectively launched his career as an artist of national recognition. Noble was strongly influenced by his French teacher and mentor, Thomas Couture, and his seminal painting Decadence of the Romans when he painted The American Slave Mart. Two years later, buoyed by his success of his first history painting, Noble created the contemporary history paintings Margaret Garner and John Brown's Blessing. Both paintings featured individuals who risked themselves and those they loved in the pursuit of freedom and liberty. In 1868 Noble The Price of Blood, A Planter Selling His Son, a painting which revealed the Southern practice of slave owners selling their slave/children for profit. In 1870, Noble painted a simplified replica of The American Slave Mart titled, The Last Sale of Slaves in St. Louis. This painting was created at a very difficult time in the artist's career and represents a desire for him to be seen as part of the greater Cincinnati community. Thomas Satterwhite Noble: A Reconstructed Rebel examines how Noble's African American imagery reflected and interpreted issues concerning slavery in the upper South, the internal slave trade, miscegenation, and abolition. This study shifts the scholarly emphasis on Noble's oeuvre from discussions relating to the manner in which African Americans were portrayed before and after slavery to how these images were perceived by contemporary reconstruction audiences.Item the evolution of a thesis(2006-05-04) Amos, Steve Michael; Craig, Patrick; Art; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The process of evolution inspires me. A chain of information needs to be created before any evolutionary process can occur. This information must be passed on and transmitted in order to create something new. During this transference, the information becomes mutated as certain traits are lost and picked up along the way. In my work tension is created by the push and pull between drawing and painting. I want my work to possess the refined qualities of a painting, yet retain the immediacy and vitality of a drawing. At the heart of this struggle is a quest for balance.Item Making God: Incarnation and Somatic Piety in the Art of Kiki Smith(2006-01-19) Wilkerson, Margaret Randolph; Withers, Josephine; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the ways in which the art of Kiki Smith (b. 1954) implements traditional Catholic material culture and ritual through its propensity, in both subject and materiality, to incarnate spiritual ideas and encourage somatic responses to it. It also considers the ways in which Smith's ambivalent attitudes towards Catholicism inform her work. Born and raised a Catholic, but no longer practicing, Smith values the material imaging of spiritual conditions, and her myriad assessments of the human form affirm her commitment to expressing sacred experience through physical means. However, while embracing Catholicism's incarnational imagination, as particularly manifest in medieval art, Smith also disputes the present-day Church's marked opposition to art that mingles the sacred and profane. The majority of scholarship has positioned Smith's body-based art within the context of the heightening politicization of the American art scene during the late twentieth-century, when arguments over the body and its ideological boundaries dominated political, social, and cultural discourses. While critical to understanding Smith's work and its influences, viewing it from a vantage of body politics and/or feminism alone drastically limits the scope of her work, obscuring the nuanced findings that can be realized when viewing such issues and their dynamic intersections within a framework of spiritual inquiry. Furthermore, this examination of the spiritual significance of Smith's art addresses a significant lacuna in American art scholarship, as scholars recognize the need for further study in the field of the visual culture of American religions. While Smith's work has caught the attention of a wide and far-reaching audience of art critics and scholars, few have thoroughly examined its spiritual dimensions, nor does the literature seriously consider how Smith's work constitutes American religious practice and experience. In articulating the interrelations between a selection of works from Smith's oeuvre and a series of historical and ideological frames, all of which negotiate the recent burgeoning of interest in contemporary art and religion in America and the ensuing debate over art's ownership and public funding, this study develops a fuller, more critical, and more theoretically-driven account of Smith's art production than has previously been assessed.