This series of oil paintings, in a variety of sizes and orientations, explore the positive relationships between Humanity and the machines that Humanity has created. Through our use of tools and ingenuity we work to shape our world to our own design. Through dramatic and narrative representations, this theme will be presented through abstraction of forms through shadow, overexposure or merging shapes allowing the viewer to participate in the interpretation of the space. Variety is emphasized through changes in historic representation, viewpoint, lighting, composition, and visual weight. Artistic research and development of these pieces references a wide range of artists both historical and contemporary in both visual composition and technical execution. The paintings utilize an assortment of techniques from washes and glazes to working wet-in-wet / Department of Art

Thesis (M.A.)--Ball State University, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Sept. 09, 2009). Includes bibliographical references (p. [18]).

During the Italian Renaissance, artists and anatomists compared man to various mechanical devices, in an attempt to uncover knowledge about the structure and processes of the human body. In so doing, they drew on ancient Greek notions of instrumentality and proportion. During the early Scientific Revolution, the metaphor of Man the machine played a key role in the development of mechanistic philosophy. During the Enlightenment, it served views on materialism and atheism. By the nineteenth century, when the Industrial Revolution was in full swing, a fundamental change in the relationship of man to machine had come about. Whereas, for Protagoras, man had been the measure of all things, now suddenly the machine was the standard by which the capacities and limits of man were judged. Man the machine was a key feature in the development of the totalitarian ideology of Communism. Moreover, for over a century now, the technocratic viewpoint has guided many technological innovations. Tracing a history of this metaphor, through Leonardo, Vesalius, Harvey, Descartes, Hobbes, Leibniz, La Mettrie, d'Holbach, Marx and Wells, places man's relationship with technology and his gradual loss of identity since the Renaissance in a new context.

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Thesis (MFineArt)--University of Melbourne, VCA Art, The Faculty of the Victorian College of the Arts, 2009. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (p. 41-42)