Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters

This thesis employs graphic design to envision the present and future scenario of humanity adapting to artificial intelligence and the current state of continuous data harvesting by organizations and platforms that lack transparency with the public. Explored topics include the impact of AI on families and the importance of gaining awareness regarding the potential negative and positive consequences of uncontrolled data collection about individuals. These themes converge in my exhibition to depict the current and potentially future reality of living in a family with the constant presence of AI and the associated dangers it entails.
The concept of data harvesting, depicted through artists books and web design, serves as a visual commentary on the current situation within families, seen as microcosms of the broader community and humanity as a whole. This situation highlights the notion that we are already residing in the Brave New World envisioned by Aldous Huxley.
AI possesses the capacity to profoundly influence all artistic genres, including artists books, introducing an additional dimension to their expression. From generating storytelling and art to facilitating collaborations between artists and artificial intelligence, the applications of AI are boundless. Utilizing Chat GPT and Adobe Firefly, I aim to create one of my artists books primarily generated by AI. This endeavor seeks to redefine a family portrait, illustrating the integration of artificial intelligence into the lives of families and humanity overall. By focusing on the family portrait genre within artists books and incorporating the latest family member, AI, I intend to prompt social awareness, fostering a deeper understanding of contemporary reality and inviting a dialogue.

Blood Drive and Other Stories is a collection of fictional works. It includes stories that take place in South Florida or are inspired by the landscape of it. The themes within each vary from the limits one is willing to go to enact small-town justice, the need to conserve consciousness, adapting to age, living with medication, and the desire to burn everything down.

The Underlying of Being exhibition explores the complex relationship between the mind and body, delving into psychological effects at a cellular level. Art, science, and psychology contemplate the fundamental source of meaning and value: the human experience. The work emphasizes that our lives are not isolated but interrelated, reflecting a commonality on the most miniature biological scale. Scientific research confirms that cells can hold emotional experiences, a finding that is relevant to all humans.
The conceptual visual context derives from philosophical systems, scientific theories, and aesthetic judgments, abstracting from the ever-changing ebb and flow of being in the living world. The Underlying of Being exhibition focuses on the figure in abstracted shapes and layers of monochromatic colors, various papers, fibers, wires, glaze, and paints, producing sections of human narration sinking below the surface into an illusion or disillusioned visual physiological state of fluid within an imagined biosystems.

Effective communication and a sense of togetherness between people from different backgrounds happen on a platform of mutual understanding. The boundaries of differences between people from various cultures limit our understanding of each other's conditions, problems, and concerns. As a designer, I seek to fade the boundaries between cultures and facilitate a conversation, promoting mutual understanding by blending visual elements from American and Iranian cultures. With interactive visual media and storytelling, I have created diverse visual artworks that combine traditional Iranian arts and crafts elements with visuals from American popular culture. This body of work includes illustrations, patterns, motion design, audio, and augmented reality. Through these shared visual experiences, I aim to introduce new values into the sphere of design, enrich the design world with diversity, and build a shared visual experience that talks both to Iranians and the cultural milieu of the United States. Producing art pieces with the theme of Shared Visual Experiences can aid in promoting diversity, fostering connection, encouraging innovation and creativity, and bringing attention to significant social and cultural issues. It is a meaningful way to contribute to a more interconnected world that benefits everyone.

The thesis focuses on the relationship between artificial intelligence (AI) and graphic design, aiming to understand AI's potential while emphasizing the unique value of human designers. This exploration will involve transforming AI-generated patterns into physical forms using paper, demonstrating the positive possibilities of AI in creative pursuits. By blending AI output with human creativity, the thesis will show how both play essential, distinct roles.
The study addresses concerns about AI's potential to replace human artists. By highlighting AI as a tool that enhances, rather than replaces, human creativity, the thesis debunks the misconception that AI will eradicate human artistry. Instead, AI can inspire and expedite creative processes while artists remain responsible for the final production.
Using Midjourney, a generative AI system, the research underscores AI's limitations in fully understanding or replicating human imagination. The study emphasizes the importance of human touch in design, particularly when using paper—a material with deep historical and cultural roots in graphic design and communication.
Furthermore, paper's use extends beyond art and design, proving its versatility and importance across various fields. The thesis highlights human ingenuity's role in maximizing paper's potential across disciplines, underscoring the critical contribution of human creativity.

This thesis focuses on identifying the presence of porotic hyperostosis in a sample made up of 119 individuals to a) assess the possible causes of porotic hyperostosis in the ancient Ecuadorian coastal societies, b) reconsider porotic hyperostosis as a nutritional stress marker, and c) propose bartonellosis as an alternative cause for the appearance of porotic lesions in the skull over 4,000 years in the Northern Andes. By applying the BoPLE (Bone Porous Lesions Evaluation) method, results obtained and clinical evidence propose that parasite infections and iron deficiencies are two of the probable causes of porotic hyperostosis in the prehistory of the Ecuadorian coast. Furthermore, the results suggested that a female skull associated with Valdivia culture phase II (3,300 – 2,800 BCE) is Ecuador's oldest record of this symptom. Likewise, the clinical characteristics of bartonellosis suggests it to be a plausible cause of porotic hyperostosis in ancient Ecuador.

Some Years Ago, My Mother was Possessed is a poetry chapbook exploring a familial lineage of abuse through fictional exit interviews taken after points of emotional and physical trauma or abuse. Through surreal landscapes and speculative futures, the poems explore the remnants of abuse, and the fear of being possessed by her family’s history of motherhood.

Although the sensationalized term “Revenge Porn” is used by media outlets to spark conversation about consent and digital privacy, the nonconsensual distribution of intimate media, or “image-based sexual abuse” (IBSA), is the preferred term by scholars for its more accurate depiction of the variety of modes, methods, and damages. I argue that targeted women experience many of the same damages to their socioemotional, interpersonal, and professional well-being that targets of traditional, offline, sexual violence experience, and that the nature and affordances of digital technology often allow these harms to transcend the once isolated contexts in which offline cases of sexual violence occurred. Moreover, regulatory bodies often trivialize and dismiss IBSA, deeming it inconsequential despite the devastating professional and socioemotional effects targets experience. This research explored a) how women navigate and respond to IBSA in the workplace when boundaries of personal and professional identities are crossed nonconsensually and whether demographic differences influence approaches via fifteen interviews with IBSA targets and two organizational leaders. The findings revealed that organizational environment and attitudes were the most influential factors in female employees' decisions to report, and in turn, employee turnover, organizational commitment, and job satisfaction. Demographic characteristics, such as age and gender, influenced how and from whom targets sought informal, or emotional support. Therefore, this research demonstrates the need for, IBSA and its impact to be foregrounded in how traditional sexual violence and harassment are dealt with. Finally, to extend the IBSA and workplace sexual harassment literature further, I argue for the importance of an organizational climate that is not only understanding, but supportive of IBSA targets in establishing appropriate training, regulations, and policy for sexual harassment both online and offline, structured around target support, prevention, and bystander intervention.

Feed is a novel set in a fictional post-revolutionary Nebraska, at a time when the developments and progress of the revolution begins to come into question. The former revolutionaries must dive into an internet-like database, referred to as the Feed, in order to unearth memories critical to their survival.

The 20th century has been called the century of percussion instruments thanks to the innovations made by performers and educators specializing in marimba and vibraphone performance. At one time, playing with four mallets, two in each hand, was considered a novelty
undeserving of serious study. The work of musicians like Clair Musser, Leigh Stevens, and Gary Burton demonstrated the functionality and versatility of four mallets in performance practice. While there exists a great deal of literature describing the history, mechanics, and applications of four mallet grips, none have spent time comparing them in how they are learned and utilized. This document considers the following four-mallet grips taught in school music programs in the United States: Musser grip, Stevens grip, cross grip, and Burton grip. Here, the history and mechanics of these grips are described and compared. Conclusions are then drawn addressing how students and educators may select a four-mallet grip to learn with consideration given to the anatomical characteristics of the learner, the demands the chosen music makes on the performer, and the instrument’s setting (e.g., solo, chamber ensemble, large ensemble, marching band, etc.).