Futurist Sculpting is a collection of techniques for representing dynamic motion in a static three-dimensional model. These techniques allow digital artists to use animation as a new modeling tool. The idea of Futurist Sculpting is inspired by the works of the Italian Futurist artists and it aims to achieve the same goal as the one described by Umberto Boccioni, “to find a form that would be like a remembered motion, the product of time but permanent in space.” However, Futurist Sculpting extends Boccioni’s idea to the new medium of 3D animation and modeling, introducing the techniques of Motion Snapshot, Surface Differentiation, and Motion Elasticity. Motion Snapshot has evolved from the idea that multiple key poses captured at different stages of motion can successfully portray the idea of movement. Surface Differentiation was developed to remove redundancy of overlaping geometry introduced by snapshots occuring with high spatial frequency. Exploded Snapshot creates a geometric blur effect and extends application of Motion Snapshots to motion of deforming objects. The Motion Elasticity technique stretches the object to represent a partial volume through which it is moving. As a proof of concept all of the Futurist Sculpting techniques were implemented in Maya. The techniques should be viewed as a set of tools for the artists. The user can choose any one of them to apply to any animation, but he needs to understand their applications and limitations too.

This study focuses on Black Metal and Death Metal music as complimentary forms of commodified evil, which, in contrast to most other forms of commodified evil, provide an alternative form of modern escapism. In particular, it demonstrates that in glorifying evil their respective natures and essences effectively suggest to us that the ability to overcome our problems, and cope with the world's atrocities, lies not in the vain hope that justice will prevail, but rather, in embracing evil and actively cultivating a desensitizing ethos of utter indifference to the plight and suffering of others. In addition, because Black Metal and Death Metal have both generated their own distinct sub-cultures, which are predominantly populated by marginalized youths, this study simultaneous begs the question: What is it that motivates them to produce and/or endorse forms of music, and thereby become members of sub-cultures, which ostensibly promote such a negative world view? Consequently, it also demonstrates some of the important ways in which they can serve to help their proponents regain a sense of power and control over their lives. It then concludes by looking at Black Metal and Death Metal's (potential) social effects - both negative and positive.

Between 1911 and 1913, two Italian brothers named Anton Giulio Bragaglia and Arturo Bragaglia produced Futurist photography which they termed "photodynamism." These images, together with the theoretical manifesto Fotodinamismo futurista, represent a remarkable effort in avant-garde photography and theory in the early 20th century. The Bragaglias' intent in making these photographs was to produce deeply emotional images of modern dynamic motion which convey the spiritual essence of human beings that becomes exteriorized in the process of physical movement. Through a short, intense campaign in 1913, Umberto Boccioni succeeded in expelling the Bragaglias from the Futurist movement. Because of this, the importance of their photography has often been neglected, underrepresented or misrepresented in scholarship. This thesis offers an alternative reading of the photodynamic project based on its occult foundation and a better sense of how to understand photodynamism within the context of the movement and the broader history of photography.

This thesis confronts the ultimate limits of perceiving the constructed world and the limits of our ability to experience architecture. The imperative of architecture is poetic: to and project encounters between matter and energy that shape the existing and bring forth the as yet unimagined to form a continuing human world. This is explored through the imagining of a habitat and vessel that projects the human endeavor of architecture into the formless depth of space. In drawing the physical from the void, the page becomes a way to move architecture from non-existence into the real by means of the imagination. An imagined wold is drawn from the void in search of the center for a universal and humanist architecture. The thesis is conceived as a vehicle for drawing the limits of perception when we attempt to imagine that which is greater than ourselves. / Master of Architecture