Sonic Activation is a multimedia performance-installation featuring sound sculptures, video projections, and performance with live electronics for solo and mixed ensembles. The work aims to unpack the nature in which we hear and interact with sound, space, and gesture. It is a project that recontextualizes the typical practice of performance and installation modes of music and art. The event uses 12 loudspeakers spaced around a gallery to create a densely layered sonic atmosphere that gently fluctuates and slowly evolves. Throughout the event, the audience is encouraged to freely navigate the gallery and experience the subtle changes in sound as they manifest in the space.

The artist discusses her Master of Fine Arts exhibition Momentary Lapses, held at Tipton Gallery, February 25-March 8, 2019. The mixed media works and video examine the intersections between digital, somatic and societal decay through the mediation of the digital image by physical anthropogenic efforts. Themes in the work include glitch art and theory, entropy, memory, decay, and loss. Contemporary American society’s desensitization associated with the oversaturation of digital imagery is discussed, as well as Guy Debord’s theory of the Spectacle, and the artistic practices of Kurt Schwitters and Robert Rauschenberg.

This written portion of my thesis documents how I, as director, conceptualized, devised and staged an immersive adaptation of August Strindberg’s A Dream Play, with the support of a large team of collaborators including: assistant directors, dramaturgs, designers, stage managers, and actors. In this document I attempt to synthesize the discoveries I made in this process regarding the challenges and experience of directing immersive theater, including the importance of giving up directorial control and relying on my collaborators as partners in the creation of the production. I begin with an introduction to the research I conducted into the field of immersive theater as well as my research on the work of August Strindberg, with a specific emphasis on the themes and context of A Dream Play. I then describe how I led my creative team through the process of designing a devised immersive theater production by encouraging open communication and fostering an atmosphere of trust. I also discuss the casting process and my efforts to establish an autonomous ensemble by allowing the actors to choose their own parts, write their own scripts, and devise their own scenes. I reflect on how I navigated the unpredictable nature of immersive theater, through a careful balance between detailed planning and free exploration, all the while embracing the possibility of failure as an expected part of the process. Finally, I attempt to assess the success of the production through examination of the impact it had on its audiences based on my own personal observations, as well as feedback collected through formal methods of survey.

The artist discusses his Master of Fine Arts exhibit, titled DUNIDEDCUDIGUNADIE. The exhibit is to be held at the Tipton Gallery in downtown Johnson City, TN, from April 2nd to April 10th, 2020. A live reception will be held the evening of April 3rd, featuring a performance with the work, titled Look at You! The following thesis explores the artist’s formative years – investigating how childhood experiences combine with artistic and theoretical influences to inform his art-making process.

This is a multidisciplinary project, at the intersection between interaction design, software development and media art. Human-Powered Interactions (HPI) is a field of Human-Computer Interactions (HCI) interested in self-sustainable systems in which power generation and the user interaction are simultaneous, unlike, for example, dynamo torches which have rechargeable batteries. Commonly found on electronic readers, Electronic Paper (e-paper) screens are ultra-low powered and do not require electricity for images to stay displayed, only to refresh them. This project explores these technologies through the prism of art, by designing and building The Human-Powered Generative Art Machine, an interactive hand-crank-powered generative art frame with an e-paper display. Through an interview with a researcher working in the field, a series of hands-on workshops and the construction of the machine, I delve into several questions around HPI, e-paper and generative art. The research uncovers new opportunities around programming and creative practices, to understand the constraints of these technologies and how to work around them. / Det här är ett tvärvetenskapligt projekt i skärningspunkten mellan interaktionsdesign, mjukvaruutveckling och mediekonst. Människodrivna Interaktioner är ett område inom Människa–DatorInteraktion som intresserar sig för självförsörjande system där kraftgenerering och användarinteraktion sker samtidigt, till skillnad från t.ex. dynamoficklampor som har uppladdningsbara batterier. Elektroniska pappersskärmar, som är vanliga i elektroniska läsplattor, har extremt låg energiförbrukning och kräver inte elektricitet för att bilderna ska visas, utan endast för att uppdatera dem. I detta projekt undersöktes dessa tekniker genom konstens prisma genom att utforma och bygga The Human-Powered Generative Art Machine, en interaktiv, handkrankdriven, generativ konstram med en e-papper-skärm. Genom en intervju med en forskare som arbetar på området, en serie praktiska workshops och en materialutforskning fördjupar jag mig i flera frågor kring Människodrivna Interaktioner, e-papper och generativ konst. Forskningen avslöjar nya möjligheter i fråga om programmering och kreativa metoder för att förstå begränsningarna i denna teknik och hur man kan arbeta runt dem.

The artist discusses his Master of Fine Arts exhibition titled, In a State of Becoming. The exhibition was on view at the Tipton Gallery in downtown Johnson City, TN from February 26 March 8, 2024. In a State of Becoming showcased three large scale paintings, five multimedia prints, two sculptural installations, and a video projection installation. Conley's thesis research and current artistic practice revolve around the interfaces, connections, and relationships of humans and animals. Conley explicitly uses language like "animal" to describe "non-human animals" in his work's context. The exhibited works focused primarily on how the artist and/or the viewer can enter the animal domain or even become the animal. Alongside these concepts, Conley utilizes various forms of media both 2D and 3D, to investigate human-animal experiences through the lens of animal objects, animal domains, and the embodied relationships between various beings in a shared location. In a State of Becoming, reframes the focus on human embodiment as empathetic connection with other animals. The shared embodied experience between both beings is heightened through animal dwellings, habitats, and remnants. Conley seeks to rediscover the hidden but present animality within humans.

The focus of this thesis is to explore the automation technology used in the modern entertainment industry. Upon completion of my thesis, I will deliver a working prototype of the chosen technology and present its capabilities in a choreographed show.

Digital forms of media are monopolizing individuals' attention spans, utilizing visual strategies that demand our interactions. Throughout the history of media technology, mediums have become increasingly immersive, presenting more information than ever before. The user interface designs of digital platforms can damage our ability to focus and distribute attention in meaningful ways. Through analysis of our digital media consumption, this capstone project ultimately proposes mindful practices that help us lead more balanced lives and thrive in the digital age. The second half of this capstone project is a digital zine with digital illustrations, animations, and editorial-style articles. The digital zine emphasizes and subverts the elements of digital platforms that are specifically damaging to users’ patterns of behavior.

When people go online and leave their mark in bytes, how do their traces get preserved, shared, or lost? In the early 2000’s through about 2012, communities of millennial girl web developers and bloggers flourished on the English-speaking Internet. They would write about their intimate lives, code their website designs from scratch, create portfolios of graphics, and forge friendships with fellow bloggers that lasted through years. Most of these blogs are now gone; only patches remain as screenshots on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. For my senior project, I explored how techniques used in glitch art, normally used for destroying image files for purely aesthetic effects, could also be used to embed texts that could be read by humans inside digital photos. I excavated photos and self-portraits of individual bloggers whose old content has since been erased from their original domains as of 2018. Then, I overrode pieces of each image file with the respective bloggers’ journal entries extracted from https://web.archive.org. The result is a picture irreversibly corroded by the loss of its original data, akin to the state of their bloggers' archived websites. It still functions like any image file in that the picture can be copied, shared, and viewed on another computer. However, unlike a typical image file, it also hides a patchwork of legible English text; one can “dig” into the image’s encoding and uncover nuggets of letters from a past Internet presence--specifically, that of a millennial girl's thoughts on identity, life, and the joys and struggles of coding and managing her own website.

Since its inception, the video game industry has been both a new medium for art and innovation as well as a major driving force in the advancements of many technologies. The often overlooked video game industry has turned from a hobby to a multi-billion dollar industry in its short, forty year life. People of all ages and genders across the world are playing video games at a higher clip than ever before. With so many new gamers and emerging technologies, it is an exciting time for the industry. The landscape is constantly changing and successful business models of the past will need to find ways to adapt if they wish to remain successful in the growing industry. Looking at how past trends and technological innovations have driven the industry gives understanding and insight into where it is at today and where it will go in the future. Video games have become an interactive art medium which inspires users to explore and create. The digitalization of games and their extreme popularity reflect our instinctive desire to seek out game-playing for its fun, cooperative, and competitive nature.