When making my work I constantly reflect on past mythologies, images, and objects. These served people as a way to make sense of and understand the dynamics of the world around them. As we continue to alter and shape the world into one designed for exclusively human benefit, we need new models that reveal the dynamics of our relationship to the world around us. This is what artists have been doing for centuries, and I specifically look to those using animals and animal imagery in their work to further mythologize our contemporary understanding of the human-other animal relationship. My body of work utilizes methods of drawing, printmaking, sculpture, and video to create contemporary icons, objects, and rituals. Icons are re-appropriated, objects are redefined, and rituals are reinterpreted in my work in a way that becomes relevant again for a contemporary audience. Animal imagery is used in a way that explores current trends in genetics, industry, consumerism, and power to reveal this contemporary mythology. These are certainly informed by the prehistoric understanding of this relationship as it is in jarring contrast to our notions today. This juxtaposition serves to illuminate how this relationship has been distorted in this historically recent time while aiming to enlighten us to the power of the other, the thing-ness or vitality of the animal and re-calibrate contemporary notions in order to achieve reconciliation with a natural order of things.

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The concept of novelty has important implications for theories of cognition, as familiar objects are categorically distinct from novel ones; accessing a stored representation of a known stimulus influences perception in a way that is precluded for a novel stimulus. The experiments that constitute this dissertation shed light on the perception-action cycle, as it is a persistent feature of human life; we see things and we act upon them. When those things are novel, how does cognitive processing change? Specifically, how do people who deliberately practice seeing things act upon them, and are there observable differences between trained and "casual" perceivers' perceptual processing? Some argue that any processing advantages possessed by experts are limited to objects or relations among objects within an expert's particular domain of expertise. However, a central point of contention revolves around what exactly constitutes a domain in the first place. Expertise may boil down to a long-term memory advantage for deliberately-practiced categories of stimuli, or to a heuristic that is only applicable to one trained goal or category of goals, or to a heuristic independent of task that can be applied to any novel situation. The present set of experiments examined visual cognition with the perceptual goal of fine-motor output (i.e., accurate sketching) as a candidate for a domain of expertise that confers advantages in visual perception in general. The extent to which visual processing is altered in expert visual artists was examined; whether they are more efficient only at sketching images of familiar stimuli, or whether their advantage extends to other visual cognition tasks. Familiarity and complexity of stimuli were manipulated, as were the goals of perception, including sketching and recognition. Finally, retention durations were manipulated before responses or sketches were made in order to examine the limits on experts' advantage on tasks that are known to tax the perceptual system. Results suggest that expertise in visual art confers a robust visual cognition advantage that generalizes beyond a narrowly-defined domain of expertise. / Psychology

Blockchain technologies and cryptocurrency have made a significant impact on today's computing and financial sectors, and the use cases for blockchain applications are increasing day by day. However, there is little understanding of blockchain and cryptocurrencies amongst the general public. In this work, we present LACE, a kinetic sculpture and decentralized ledger created to educate audiences on the complexities of cryptocurrency creation through a visual form. We discuss the design and implementation of LACE as a modular system constructed of 10 kinetic units, each unit containing an array of Microsoft Surface tablets and one delta robot arm to perform touch based operations on each tablet with a modified stylus. Through this structure, we establish a distributed computing system in which each tablet represents blockchain nodes that maintain copies of the blockchain, mine for new blocks and process transactions through visual software interfaces. Additionally, we implement an interactive gaming module to help audiences understand the work of blockchain creation and the mining process. Finally, we evaluate the LACE project's effectiveness to teach audiences through a detailed questionnaire at the 2022 Accelerate Festival in Washington, DC. We found that 73% of visitors agreed they were able to learn something new from LACE and 82% enjoyed their interaction with LACE. / Master of Science / Global technology, computing, economic and financial sectors are all increasingly influenced by the use of the relatively new technologies known as blockchain and cryptocurrency. A blockchain is a publicly distributed digital ledger that keeps track of transaction data securely through cryptography. This technology is heavily associated with the global economy, following the introduction of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin in 2008. Cryptocurrency has often been compared to fiat currencies which are not backed by a commodity with intrinsic value like gold. Bitcoin is seen as a commodity due to its scarcity, with approximately 19 million bitcoins in existence and can be used as a monetary value to purchase goods and services. Studies have shown that a large segment of the general public has little to no understanding of these concepts, even those who have significant related investments. To help expand the understanding of these topics to general audiences, we present LACE; a kinetic sculpture and digital ledger designed to educate audiences on the complexities of cryptocurrency creation through visual and interactive demonstration. LACE demonstrates the processes of blockchain technologies through physical robotic movement and interactive software visualizations. Consisting of a collection of 10 acrylic hexagon units stacked together like building blocks to mimic a virtual network, each unit interacts with an array of Microsoft Surface tablets through an operating robot arm and modified stylus. These tablets illustrate the work of a blockchain through various visualizations, demonstrating the work of nodes and miners who operate and maintain a blockchain network. To help audiences understand the work of blockchain creation and the mining process, we implement an interactive gaming module where participants can act as a miner within a blockchain network and assist in the process of mining for new blocks, help maintain the blockchain and process transactions. We evaluate the LACE project's effectiveness to teach audiences through a detailed questionnaire at the 2022 Accelerate Festival in Washington, DC. We found that 76% of visitors had a better understanding of blockchain concepts following their interactions with LACE and 82% enjoyed their interaction with the sculpture overall.

This study looked at the impact of a weeklong visual art program informed by clinical art therapy on empathy development with two groups of adolescents in their school setting. The study used a mixed-methods approach to uncover any quantitative change in empathy as well as identify emergent themes seen through qualitative data. Quantitative outcomes indicated no change in empathy development as seen through analysis of a survey measure. Qualitative analysis uncovered several key findings seen through observations, participant interviews, and visual art data; most specifically, participants illustrated beginning levels of empathy by way of increased self-awareness and several cognitive functions involved in empathy development.

The concept behind "Drop, then Fade" draws inspiration from the convergence of "negative space" found in traditional Chinese art forms, such as painting, calligraphy, and seal cutting, and the evocative paintings of contemporary Chinese-Canadian artist Matthew Wong. In traditional Chinese painting, the concept of "negative space" is integral, symbolizing the harmony between humanity and nature, accentuating the subject, and conveying a sense of boundless space to evoke profound artistic depth. During a recent visit to the Museum of Fine Arts, I was deeply moved by Wong's works, which Raffi Khatchadourian eloquently describes as portraying "solitary figures, set adrift" amidst nature's overwhelming presence—whether depicted riding in a car at dusk or navigating through swathes of paint that seem to stretch endlessly. A discernible dialogue emerges between Wong's paintings and the concept of "negative space." "Drop, then Fade" delves into the musical interpretation of negative space, exploring how it intricately interacts with other elements—sometimes leaving them adrift, solitary, or overflowing, akin to ink drops diffusing into water and gradually dissipating. Within this musical framework, I integrate a poem I composed following my encounter with Wong's exhibition, adding another layer of artistic expression to the dialogue between visual and auditory media. / 2026-05-22T00:00:00Z

This dissertation describes the effects of a somatic mindfulness project on the way participants interact with and respond to works of art in a gallery setting. The study begins with a critique of Descartes' philosophy, Cartesianism, which emphasizes the role of the mind over that of the body and senses and argues that this thought continues to affect education even today. By contrast, phenomenology and mindfulness practices attempt to overcome Descartes' legacy by focusing on the importance of the body in lived experience. In particular, this study uses a phenomenological framework to conduct mindfulness on the relationship between the body and the perception of art. To do so, I utilized several phenomenological techniques for gathering data, including observations, video, and interviews, and I also created a unique method to analyze the data using a phenomenological verbal (written) description and visual (through photographic paintings) description. These techniques worked together to express the moment of reversibility between the meditative body and the artworks in the gallery setting. In sum, the findings of this study show that meditation changes the perceptual experience for different people in different ways. Another finding is that different forms of meditation may work better for some people than others. The findings of this study suggest that if art teachers are interested in using meditation, they need to be familiar with multiple forms of meditation. Also, they need to consider the role of the environment, as well as that of the artworks, in creating a wholistic meditative mood.