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I remember as a young child being fascinated with all forms of transportation: from the Walt Disney World monorails and shuttle buses, to Busy Boats, my favorite library picture book, to my first train ride, a 20-mile one-way trip on Amtrak that became the subject of my second-grade book fair masterpiece, The Great Day. Now, quite a number of years later, that fascination remains, manifesting itself in different ways, like getting excited when I get stopped by a passing train at a railroad crossing or riding the city bus to campus every day. Being an avid newspaper reader, I followed the long public process in the winter and spring of 2006–2007 as the Port Authority of Allegheny County, the public transit entity in Pittsburgh, identified ways to reduce costs to meet a multi-million dollar budget shortfall. Being a designer, one of the things that struck me was the Port Authority’s use of visuals to communicate what routes they proposed for elimination. These diagrams, one of which is shown in Figure 1, left something to be desired. It didn’t seem to communicate a clear message amidst all the visual clutter. I spent a few weeks trying out different variations and revisions of the diagram for a class in mapping and diagramming and thought that this area of design—user experience and complex information systems for transit—would be perfect for further study. In my preliminary review of current literature, I found studies of specific design improvements, such as a new bus map system in London (Horne, Roberts & Rose, 1986), historical reviews of iconic documents such as the London Underground diagram (Garland, 1994) and surveys of current practices by organizations such as the American Public Transportation Association (2007), an industry trade group, and the Transportation Research Board (1999). However, this research focused primarily on the document or artifact in question and only tangentially on rider information needs from an abstract perspective while ignoring the user experience. This essay will present the results of my observations and thoughts about the user experience of riders in public transportation systems. I will begin by defining a public transportation system and describing its various components and integration into the city’s transportation infrastructure. In the second section, I’ll describe users of these transit systems—the riders—and offer a series of categories and characteristics we can use to understand why they use public transportation. I’ll discuss how these riders use a public transportation system in section three, by offering a five-part model for a trip. Finally, in section four, I will analyze various aspects of the physical, printed artifacts transit systems distribute to the public to communicate what services they provide.

The purpose of this research is to examine the use of a mock-up review process in interior design projects to better understand the implications of using such a process within the standard professional practice model. The research consisted of interviewing design professionals who utilize mock-ups as part of their standard of practice. These interviews were centered around two groups - those working in shipbuilding, where mock-ups have a long history, and those working in land-based projects, where mock-up use is rare. Analysis of the interviews indicated a positive relationship between mock-up use and collaboration, innovation, and problem solving. The interviews also brought to light concerns on behalf of all the professionals surveyed about the current practice model in land-based building design and construction projects within the United States. The positive relationships shown in the thesis support further research to explore how mock-ups can be best utilized in interior design.

I am an interdisciplinary artist, educator and writer from Southern California. My practice explores the ways in which images, text and even something as complex as human identity are all made up of fragmented parts that work together to establish visual narrative. Working across multiple media, I create artworks that are lyrical and chaotic and place them in highly aestheticized conditions. My work depicts universal themes of love, loss and resilience over social and political oppression. Additionally, my work questions ideas of social and personal validity, agency and the visually queer.

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No description available.

For the purposes of this thesis, an operational definition of totem is explored to reflect totem structures in the traditional sense, as compared to totem sculpture as portrayed in the television show Northern Exposure. Totem: A totem is a memorial, identifying, or ceremonial sculpture made of any materials, in any shape, and of any size. It may be commissioned by someone and made by an artist or the artist could create it for him/herself. It is introduced into the community with ceremony that gives it power and life. This power could be supplied by a formal or informal dedication in a spiritual sense or by turning on a switch in a literal sense. Based on this definition four artworks are compared and contrasted in the television series Northern Exposure and various types of Northwest Coast Native American totem poles. I chose the Northwest Coast Native American totem poles for the comparison and contrast because Northern Exposure is set and filmed in the Northwest Coast region. In order to make these relationships with Northern Exposure, I researched the totem poles of the Northwest Coast Native Americans. The following groups are emphasized because of.their contribution to totem poles carving: Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Kwakiutl, Nootka, and Coast Salish. Each group has a different style of carving totem poles as well as creating different types of poles for varying purposes. The ritual of the potlatch, or give-away, where the totems are introduced and unveiled, is also described as are the totem poles and totem pole carvers today. This brings the Northwest Coast totem art to the same time period as Northern Exposure. Northern Exposure is a Universal Studios television series shown on CBS from 1990-1995. Many artworks are created on the show by different characters. Four artworks, considered totems by my definition, are compared and contrasted with. traditional totem poles of the Northwest Coast. This evaluation is made after the plot, characters, and each of the episodes containing the artworks were summarized. The examples of totemic artwork in Northern Exposure are as varied as the purposes of the Northwest Coast Native American totem poles. In many ways, the totemic sculpture of Northern Exposure is like the traditional totem poles of the Northwest Coast. The purposes for the sculptures are inherently similar. The differences lie in the appearance of the sculpture and the degree of elaboration and presentation in the pot latches or dedication ceremonies for the sculptures. The totem art, in both cases, celebrates individuals, connects families, tells stories, records histories, and communicates ideas. The unifying trait between the totem poles of the Northwest Coast, traditional and contemporary, and the totem sculptures in Northern Exposure is the apparent need for people to create art that identifies, memorializes, or commemorates people, events, concepts, and achievements.

Since the beginning of time, men have dominated the creation, theorization, and evaluation of art. And though women have also been creating art throughout the centuries, they have typically been relegated to the realm of decorative and applied arts, and therefore their work has largely been ignored and overlooked. It is true that women would occasionally be successful at breaking into the male-dominated art world and achieving some measure of recognition and even fame, but these success stories are few and far between. Fortunately, this begins to change in the twentieth century; women finally have a slightly better chance at eking out a name for themselves and making a substantial contribution to the art world. But the gender-related obstacles female artists faced were compounded when they were married to male artists. It is only natural that two artists involved in a day-to-day relationship have mutual influence on one another's artistic ideologies and styles, but the female is often accused of copying her husband and producing a pale imitation of his work. The marriage between Abstract Expressionist painters Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock serves as a prime example of this additional discrimination. Ignoring the volumes of gossip and myth that surround the highly publicized marriage of Krasner and Pollock, and instead focusing solely on their development as artists and the work that they produced, I sought to discover for myself whether Krasner deserved her reputation as a second-rate artist. After careful research and analysis I determined that neither artist was superior, but rather each was vitally important to the development, success, and impact that Abstract Expressionism had on the rest of the art world.

Hildegard von Bingen was a nun in the twelfth century who, despite extraordinarily severe circumstances, grew to be one of the most influential and respected people that we still know today. At the age of eight, she was dedicated, by her parents, to a monastery where she became an 'anchoress,' or person consigned to one of the harshest forms of religious purification. She lived in a small, isolated cell, void of human interaction, save for another anchoress who was her tutor. Hildegard remained imprisoned in this state until she was about fifteen or sixteen years of age. Hildegard wrote in her autobiography that she was extremely frail in health and that she experienced spiritual visions from about the age of three. Today these visions are medically recognized to have been migraine headaches. I agree with this, but I also think that Hildegard, in addition to the migraines, had a compulsive condition known as Hypergraphia, which fiercely influenced her character and motivation. Although the migraines may have been pre-existent at the time of her dedication into the monastery, I believe that the Hypergraphia stemmed from her experiences there. This study will examine Hildegard' s life during and after her confinement and the repercussions, such as the evolving migraine auras and Hypergraphia. The migraine auras are found symbolically within the imagery of her illuminated manuscripts. I have compared the characteristics of migraine auras with the imagery found in Hildegard' s illuminations. I have also examined the similarities between Hildegard's philosophy and her high amount of productivity with characteristics of Hypergraphia.

The purpose of this thesis is to provide insight, from an art historical perspective, into the complexity of Pre-Columbian beliefs and aesthetics by discussing the masking traditions of the Olmec, Maya, and Aztec. This thesis also explores the iconography of ancient masking among the Olmec, Mayan, and Aztec civilizations. A focus will be on the shamanism associated with the masking traditions.