Graduate Studies

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The University of Calgary master and doctoral theses archive. Full text is made available when possible.

Some titles may be embargoed due to access restrictions or digital copy availability. Some embargoed titles may be eligible for digital request. Select file to request access.

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Browsing Graduate Studies by Department "Art"

Now showing 1 - 20 of 261
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    <3 An Artistic Exploration of Contemporary Online Courtship
    (2021-10-08) Housego, Kenzie; Eiserman, Jennifer Roam Flint; Leier, Heather; Hardy, Michelle Arlene; Viczko, April A.
    This paper traces how my multi-media art practice explores contemporary courtship by investigating past and present modes of behaviour related to dating rituals. By using a research-creation methodological approach, my textile-based practice combines technological components to engage audiences in a dialogue with artworks based on gathered experiences of love and dating online. This body of work investigates the conveyed meanings of emojis, texts, and sexts, while juxtaposing historical and contemporary visual symbology to draw parallels or find differences between methods of signalling attraction through display. This study seeks to highlight how romantic communication, conducted and transmitted via screens and on digital platforms, can be interpreted or misinterpreted between potential partners. Given that romantic exchanges in digital culture are therefore processed through technology and appear as symbols and codes which may or may not be successfully communicated, I aim to understand this phenomenon through created experiences which examine facets of 21st century courtship. Contemporary online courtship employs new and unprecedented mechanisms for connecting with potential romantic partners, theoretically enhancing the chance of finding true love (if that is the goal). This paper details the development of ❤️❤️❤️, a five part series of investigatory electronic and textile new media artworks that analyze digital courtship behaviours, probing their historical Victorian-era roots, while examining how they both break from these traditions and reinvent contemporary online dating romance. The combination of historical and contemporary, symbolically-laden, modes of visual communication uncover various facets of 21st century romance including: its relationship to technology, online self-representation, communication, gender tropes, and historical and contemporary signs and signifiers connected to notions of romance and courtship texts. These artworks leverage technology through embedded electronic sensors, LED light displays, and texting with programmed artwork chatbots. The audience is invited to engage with the artworks in a dialectical relationship. The outcome of this audience participation is intended to produce a deeper understanding of contemporary dating through a relational approach via these technological tools. Viewers shift from passive observers of the artworks to active co-producers as they utilize digital media to express their ideas while experiencing other points of view, and ultimately, form their own individual meanings.
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    404 NOT FOUND
    (2018-09-14) Sun, Xiaoyu; Cahill, Susan; Gadbois, Denis; Hogan, Mél
    404 NOT FOUND addresses an arts-based studio practice exploring how data and technology quantify and surveil the self. Specifically, in this paper, I outline my creative research practice and my interest in using my own body as a subject to create artworks that explore the expansive reach, as well as the limitations, of surveillance. This thesis support paper follows a chronological trajectory that traces my art practice throughout the two years of my MFA programme. My creative research started from using animation entitled Black Quantified-self, as a vehicle to engage with the concept of the “quantified-self.” I created a series of hand-drawn animations to discuss the pros and cons of “quantified-self.” Then, I connected “quantified-self” with big data, and created an installation called Seeing Yourself through Technology with my photos and self-portraits. In addition, I expanded the topic into large notions of surveillance, and created two videos, The Blue Pill and We Are Walled.
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    'A delicate agreement': exploring subtle gaze-triggered interaction in art
    (2011) MacDonald, Lindsay; Leblanc, Jean-René; Carpendale, Sheelagh
    Elevators are awkward spaces. There are unspoken rules about what behaviour is acceptable while riding with a stranger. If these rules are broken, the remainder of the elevator ride becomes unbelievably uncomfortable. If a stranger casts their gaze in any direction other than towards the doors, this can threaten the delicate agreement that tacitly exists between the occupants of the elevator, turning the mood into an emotional pressure cooker. A Delicate Agreement is a gaze-triggered interactive art installation that explores this concept. It is a set of elevator doors with a peephole in either side that entices viewers to peer inside and observe an animation of the passengers. Each elevator passenger, or character, has a programmed personality that enables them to act and react to the other characters' behaviour and the viewers' gaze. The result is the emergence of a rich interactive narrative made up of encounters between the characters.
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    A Homesick world: An Exploration of the Concept of Home and the Quest for Belonging in an Unfamiliar Land
    (2023-09-12) Samavaki, Seyede Mitra; Schwartz, Dona; McCoy, Liza; Rudd, Annie
    This research-creation is a photographic exploration of the concept of home and belonging for immigrants. Drawing on my personal experience as a photographer and an immigrant, I have shed light on my sense of homesickness and the loss of my sense of belonging in order to signify immigrants’ struggle in finding a place they can call home. This research paper is centered on the theories of “liminality,” the uncertain state of being in-between, of being neither here nor there, to discuss the transitional phase of separation from one’s homeland and integration into the new land. This liminality is a widespread experience in our modern era as mobility, immigration and separation from one’s home and the sense of being home is on the rise. I argue that photography is a therapeutic tool to overcome the lost sense of belonging as it helps me as an immigrant to contemplate on my transitional phase of life and gives me the opportunity to create bonds and connections with a lost home.
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    A Revelation of order and form
    (1986) Allingham, Lionel; Deacon, Peter
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    "A soft touch": a written accompaniment to the thesis exhibition
    (1992) Major, Mary Jo; Laing, William
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    A survey of soft sculpture, 1965-1975
    (1975) Margesson, Victoria Walker; Stocking, John R.
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    A Way
    (2018-09-19) Savage, Christopher Charles Mackay; Eiserman, Jennifer; Anderson, Judy
    The results of my research creation practice, A Way, seeks to share the conditions of reflective practice with viewers. Drawing inspiration from depth psychology, philosophy, and literature, and based on my study of relevant artists and their practice, I worked to create an immersive installation environment. In deconstructing and simplifying a selection of archetypal forms, I seek to allow the viewer to relate the strangeness of my own interpretations to experiences of their own. I have strove to achieve this by presenting a non-linear narrative experience using a variety of objects unfolding in a rhizome-like pattern, that suggests an allegorical journey through an inner landscape.
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    Accompanying paper to thesis exhibition
    (1984) Trevelyan, James E. (James Elvin), 1952-; Woodrow, Paul
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    accumulation/ablation
    (2010) Colwell, Diane Edith; McConnell, Clyde S.
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    Actions of Reconciliation
    (2018-09-20) Tritter, Nicole Danielle Korenda; Schwartz, Dona; Anderson, Judy; Cahill, Susan
    This journey of R/reconciliation within myself, to this land and within this country has been a central theme of my research creation. I arrived on campus with questions about my role within the Canadian Reconciliation process and wondered whether I could make art to reflect R/reconciliation and/or create dialogue about its meaning. Using an Indigenous methodology that favours self-transformation, I used embodied knowledge to lead my art-making practice. University of Calgary/Mohkinstsis began as an art intervention on campus where I redesigned the University’s Coat of Arms and logo. The redesign was created though Indigenous traditional teachings, where “parallels” were found between oral and written knowledge systems. These “parallel practice” teachings became foundational thoughts for Stitching my flesh back together, a piece which reflects a more personal journey towards self-reconciliation. My cultural background has Mi’kmaq (from time immemorial), Acadian French (from the first colony in Canada) and Ukrainian immigrant (first-born Canadian) roots. These differing backgrounds often clashed within my body. I found reconciliation by using the traditional art-forms of cross-stitching, beading, quilling and quilting to create an interconnected image and complete person.
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    AI as a Journey Toward Memory, Loss, and Nostalgia
    (2024-09-09) Marshall, Gregory F.; Leblanc, Jean-Rene; Stark, Trevor; Furr, Rob; Tepperman, Charles; Parker, Jim
    The recent rapid rise of artificial intelligence represents a watershed moment in the evolution of automated computing technology and its effects on industry and society, including our notions of contemporary art. My artistic research explores some of these dilemmas within contemporary art using three significant themes: memory, loss, and nostalgia. Through the media art installation Phalanx, I merge AI-assisted imagery with vintage slide projection, with nearly 600 AI-assisted slide images cycling to the viewer, sampled from the source images of my father’s Kodachrome collection from the mid to late 1960s. I examine personal history as a stand-in element reflected against different geographic contexts authored through the generative AI program Midjourney. With dataveillance wrapped within the ethos of a vast dataset as a product of deep learning through generative AI image making, I loosely borrow ‘chance aesthetics’ to explore how Midjourney affects my creative process and consider its potential as an artistic tool. The project’s origin stemmed from the fact that my elderly parents and the last remaining relatives will soon be gone, where it perhaps serves as a tribute through a creative therapeutic nostalgic process. It is an experiment that invites viewers to possibly engage with notions of memory, loss, and nostalgia resulting from massive global datasets tapped through avenues of our personal histories that are re-imagined around the globe.
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    Air series: places of enchantment
    (2005) Lang, Timothy; Kostyniuk, Ronald L.
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