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Music and architecture share a sacred bond across cultures. Their histories intertwine and together, they shape ritualistic, religious, and popular practices. As one of the few remaining avenues of universal transcendental experiences that have been so integral to humans, music’s ability to create ecstatic spaces is ever more necessary for the modern human. This thesis uses spatial, artificial intelligence, visual, and aural tools—while engaging in a dialogue between rationalist architecture and shamanic conceptions of spaces—to create an ecstatic space that seeks to reimagine the union of music and architecture. It reveals new ways in which this union can be experienced synonymously and utilizes novel approaches to design such a space.

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Proceeding from a framing of theater as collaborative storytelling, I argue for defining role-playing games as a kind of performance and for their value in structuring experiential and participatory theater. Building on the impulse at the heart of experiential and immersive theater to place the audience within the world of the performance and center their experience, I explore what it means for theater artists to cede control over how audiences make meaning of their work in favor of letting narrative emerge from the participation of the audience during the performance event. I propose a framework called pervasive performance that merges theatrical frames and methods with pervasive gaming, which expands the magic circle of play and blurs the distinction between the game and everyday life. This union of ideas puts audience members in contact with one another and allows them to be playful and co-author the overall performance experience. Further, the blurring of the performance and everyday life transforms audience members’ relationship to the real world and gives them space to imagine and experiment with other worlds and ways of being in them. I devised an alternate reality game (ARG) at UMass Amherst in May 2023, and in my thesis I analyze this project and the process of creating it as a case study in pervasive performance.

<p>Building on concepts of the pastoral, the picturesque, the “vernacular ruin,” and frontierism in an American context, this thesis explores the interest in ruin and commodity-oriented refuse within rural, wilderness, and what Leo Marx in <em>The Machine in the Garden</em> calls “middle ground” environments. Chapter one analyzes how “nature” has been conceptualized as a place where human-made objects become repurposed through the gaze of the spectator. Theories surrounding gallery and exhibition space, as well as archaeological practices related to garbage excavation, are assessed to determine how waste objects, when wrested out of context, become artifacts of cultural significance. Chapter two turns to focus on the settler experience of the frontier in order to locate a uniquely American evolution of the interest in everyday waste objects. Chapters three and four return to the rural and the pastoral to focus on Marx’s concept of the “middle ground.” In dialogue with Marx’s theories, I propose a definition of the “neopastoral” as that which evolves from the interjection of domestic waste into these middle spaces to the aesthetic appropriation of everyday, common objects in modernist American poetry. The final chapter focuses on selected poems by modernist writers such as Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, and W.C. Williams to analyze their explicit references to everyday waste in conjunction with the mythologized American pastoral. These poets provide evidence for how the drive to poeticize an abandoned, human-made object’s proximity to a natural environment plays a significant role in the perception of the fragmented object-subject relationship in modernity.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

My art distills my relationship to spirituality, digital culture, and the practices and side-effects therein, into a simplified visual language. The work manifests in the form of paintings, drawings, and light sculptures. Meditation and mindfulness training are a large part of my influence and interests. I often wonder how mindfulness practice can be mirrored in my artwork, not only in my process for creating the work, but also with what the resulting imagery does for the viewer. My intention is to provide an art form that invites one to look and experience one’s own capacity to observe, without the need for immediate intellectualization. I wish to offer people an opportunity to focus their attention on the phenomenological sensations that emanate from the art, to take a step back from the conceptual part of the mind, and step into a part that’s more fundamental to our moment to moment reality.

Research has revealed that more Americans than ever are turning to the World Wide Web as their primary source for news and information instead of legacy media outlets such as printed newspapers and magazines and broadcast news. As more and more people rely on the Internet as a primary source for news, it is important to analyze the characteristics and content of online news to expose and correct problems associated with the practices that inform its production and presentation. There are several longstanding practices in the American journalistic tradition that have been adapted to the online news environment. The practices of market segmentation and gatekeeping are two such practices. To date, few studies have explored how internet news coverage differs when the same story is altered to address the perceived interests of specific target audiences. This goal of this study was to collect and examine the characteristics of news stories presented on the homepages of three news websites—the Huffington Post, Huffington Post Black Voices and News One—to arrive at conclusions about the similarities and differences in how news content is reported to a general audience and to an African-American audience. This exploratory study used both Web sphere analysis and qualitative analysis to examine the collected homepage news stories. It used the results of the analyses to explore the possible effects continued market segmentation and selective exposure online could have on discourse in the public sphere. The study found that the legacy media practice of market segmentation was evident when online news reporting on targeted and untargeted news website homepages was compared. The study also revealed that the traditional role of the Black Press in legacy media has been resurrected in new media and is evident on news websites produced by African-Americans, for an African-American audience. Additionally, a qualitative examination of online news coverage of President Barack Obama’s 2012 State of the Union address and the death of Trayvon Martin revealed that the targeted audience influences the editorial slant through which news websites report stories.

Using plants as a basis for exploring the interstices between the human and nonhuman, this thesis investigates ideas of awareness, intelligence, deep time, animism, and the fluctuating human perception of the agency of Nature. It outlines environmental art practices since the 1950s involving vegetal life. In addition, the paper provides a critical analysis of plant perception of Jakob von Uexküll’s work and theories of vital materialism and “critical plant studies” while noting recent studies in plant neurobiology. In my work, plants become active participants via their movement, seeding, and smell. This study takes the form of imitation, purposeful symbiosis, anthropomorphism, and touch and uses an interdisciplinary practice involving various experiments, video, and plant life. In suggesting a new possible understanding of plants, the work argues for a new ecological ethos in a time when global warming weighs heavily on world policy and consciousness.

For centuries, Arabic music has been intrinsically linked to Arab culture and by extension bonded to the environmental landscape of the region, reflecting their emotions, moods, and behaviors. Numerous technological advancements in the latter half of the twentieth century, have greatly affected the rich legacy of Arabic music, significantly impacting the natural progression of traditional Arabic musical genres, scales, and instrumentation. This thesis serves as an introduction to generative methods of music production, specifically music generated through gestures. Through generative music, and its unique ability to map gestures to different musical parameters, music can be produced using computer algorithms. The outcome of this thesis aims to demystify the intricacies of recent technological advancements to enable the musician and the audience to incorporate responsive technology into their ensembles. This approach aims to further evolve Arabic music, using the concepts of Arabic music creativity while addressing international accessibility through integration. The intention of this thesis is to bridge between the contemporary and the traditional Arabic audiences and provides insight into a possible future of Arabic music based on its own fundamental principles.

You Don't Have to be Good, is a nonfiction collection of prose, poetry and graphic memoir set in New Orleans, central Florida, and points in between. In this coming-of-age memoir, I recall the abrupt end of my dad's life, the 24 years of my life in which he was alive, and the years after his death—remembering him while living without him in his hometown of New Orleans. Along the way there are meditations on language, race, gender, dreams, addiction, and ecology. My family and I encounter Hurricane Katrina and Mardi Gras, and at least one shuttle launch. These are the stories I find myself telling at parties, and also those I've never voiced until now.