Ways of Seeing

Visual studies majors at Penn Arts and Sciences approach vision from both the physical side—how we see—and the philosophical—what we see. The program is uniquely structured as an interdisciplinary combination of philosophy, psychology, history of art, fine arts, architecture, and other relevant perspectives. As a senior, each student completes a year-long project which includes a written research paper and a visual “making.” This year, their themes ranged from unfriendly architecture to artistic presentations of Israel and Palestine. 

DYANA WING SO

Art About Elsewhere: On the Cultural Politics of Representing Israel and Palestine

My thesis explores the meaning and implications of outsiders making art about their encounters with Israel and Palestine. I focus on the following three works: Ici et Ailleurs/ Here and Elsewhere (1976), a film by Jean Luc-Godard; Green Line (2004), an art performance by Francis Alÿs; and Desert Bloom (2015), a series of land­scape-aerial photographs by Fazal Sheikh. The gesture of making art based in polemic, geographic sites chal­lenges our understanding of seeing, knowing, and imagining our transnational, globalized network society. Amid the simulacra and noise of information and imagery, these works continue to question the meaning of borders, identity, memory, and perception through their media. Juxtaposed together, these works also create a virtual reality out of the phenomenon of Israel and Palestine based, not in the traditional, modernist understanding of time and space, but rather, in its persistence of memory and controversy.

My gallery installation consists of photos I took in the summers of 2014 and 2015 in Israel and the West Bank (Palestine), depicting what I found there and what can cross through the region’s borders.

AMELIA STORCK

The Candidate Brand

U.S. presidential campaigns have changed significantly since the establishment of the office of president. One significant trend has been the increasing importance of the “candidate image,” referring to the visual appearance of a candidate, as well as the characteristics attributed to a candidate through imagery and speech. Visual imag­ery is one of the most powerful tools at a campaign’s disposal, and the campaign logo is one of its most pervasive visual materials. It provides a method of identifying the candidate’s name while communicating his or her values and strengths, all in one compact and portable unit. The recent proliferation of platforms through which candidates communicate with voters has made the logo useful across campaign media, and candidate logos have received greater attention than ever before. The logo plays into the current trends of a visual culture in which people see hundreds of images every day and look for quicker, simpler ways to give and receive information. As campaigns have entered farther into the digital realm, the logo has become more graphical and more adaptable to multiple platforms. It should not be underestimated as a force in creating and maintaining the candidate image or as a significant player in the election of a president.

My thesis installation looks back at the history of official presidential campaign logos, and maps their qualities as points within a data set. Viewers are invited to find trends and correlation along the timeline, and make hypotheses about the future of campaign logos.

BRITT GATES-KAYYEM

Memory as Personality:
A Psychological and Artistic Approach to Understanding the Self

Just as child art is a reflection of the child’s attempt to visualize and organize his perceptual world and his space within it, our memories serve as the foundation of our sense of self. My thesis addresses how memory is a formative process in the development of personality. I look at memory as the foundation for the construction of personality, personal history, and sense of self as it grounds us in our own lives and in our relationships to others. Regardless of whether the memories we have are implanted, false, or have been manipulated, they are a part of who we are. I believe it is in these very mistakes, the cracks and ambiguity of our memory, that we find our true selves. The sense of self is formed not only in the recollection and manipulation of memories, but also in the creation and substantiation of them.

My visual component seeks to materialize my own memories in an attempt to elicit a personal memory experience for the viewer. Through light projection, video, and sculpture, I aim to depict the process of recalling memories: visual, tactile and auditory. Using two elevated windowsills in the Fox Gallery, I play with scale and perspective, forcing the viewer to climb up to eye-level to the windowsills as if they are the size of child. And by creating an enclosed psychophysiological space, I aspire to separate the viewer from outside stimuli and to provide an opportunity for the viewer to return to his or her childhood when most formative memories are made. 

MARGOT HALPERN 

Power and Visibility in Hip Hop Visuals and Renaissance Portraits 

My thesis is focused on the connections and commonalities that exist between the two seemingly disparate realms of hip-hop imagery and Renaissance portraiture, and ultimately how they are visually manifested. This idea was born out of a Tumblr page that juxtaposes images from these two cultures based on undeniable formal similarities. I set out with the intention of investigating the validity of these connections between modern day hip-hop and Renaissance portraiture in particular, as the Renaissance was a unique histor­ical moment that marked the emergence of individualism and identity expressed in image, and hip-hop visuals reflect this concept as well. Through research into scholarly sources that deal with hip-hop and the Renaissance individually, as well as jointly, along with more recent media articles and trends regarding the rising fluidity between the hip-hop world and the art world, I have found that there is a deeper connection and more of an understanding that exists between hip-hop and art than initially implied by the Tumblr, a point of contention that my thesis aims to shed light on. 

VINCENT SNAGG

Indexical Design: Abstraction and Representation in Sensory Applications

With the rise of technologies that ‘black box’ the complexity of scientific knowledge, designers are in a position to strategize human-centered applications for situations that were previously beyond their reach, such as the living world. With the radical cross-disciplinarity that abstraction encourages, designers strategically utilize representations scientifically revered for their explanatory function—indices—alongside representations that designers are typically known for manipulating—symbols. In this thesis, I outline two important shifts in design: a shift in representational strategy that emphasizes sensory markers as evi­dence, as well as a shift in methodology, where designers use abstracted versions of systems from other fields and repurpose them for interrogative applications. In the gallery, I have visualized how recent design endeavors fit into the indexical design paradigm according to three main criteria: representational parsimony, explanatory function, and transfer of agency.

NATALIA REVELO LA ROTTA

Architecture and Power: A Relationship That Shapes the Public 

This project aims to highlight the relationship between architecture and power, specifically looking at how architecture practices are used to reinforce hierarchical power structures within the public sector of cities. All citizens have equal rights to the city; more explicitly, to the public aspects granted by the city. However, this is not always the case. Public benches are designed to be uncomfortable; building corners are being lined with metal spikes to prevent homeless from finding refuge; public space is being designed to increase surveillance or assert the hierarchical power structures. For my installation, I am focusing on the motivation, design, and management of bus stops and shelters as a way to learn more about this practice.

These practices are being done mostly without input from the community; therefore, it is creating a top-down structure that imposes these practices on the public. For this project I am asking the question, what would happen if the power structures were eliminated from the equation? What would bus stops and shelters designed by the community that they serve look like and how would that differ from what is currently available in the city? In order to do this experiment, design charrettes were held in various neighborhoods in Philadelphia and participants could share their experiences with bus shelters, reflect on what could be improved, and contribute designs. The installation displays these designs to create a visual of what community design for the community looks like.

CAMILA ZAGER

Engaging the Liminal Realm: An Investigation of Transformation through Mindfulness and Playfulness at Burning Man

Burning Man is a temporary city that offers an experience with extraordinary transformative potential. Its Ten Principles are grounded in a profound respect for oneself, the community, and the environment. In my thesis, I foreground two major symbols at Burning Man, the Man and the Temple, to discuss how states of mindfulness and playfulness facilitate personal and social transformation. By first establishing this annual event as a work of Social Practice, I engage in a psychoanalytical and philosophical discourse in an attempt to obtain a greater understanding of the transformative experience and its contributing factors. Thus, I argue that optimal human functioning may be achieved by environments, practices, and artworks that stimulate self-reflection, collabora­tion, and a sense of meaning. When we become more open to the inquisitive spirit of play, we test the limits of our preconceptions. When we are mindful, we develop a deeper compassion and awareness. Burning Man serves as an example of a liminal realm; a transitional place. By immersing oneself in an ephemeral environment and intentionally nurturing a simultaneous balance between these states of mind, one may encounter the opportunity to learn, change, and grow. 

The intention for my installation is to create an environment that captures the essence of transformation at Burning Man. I present my own version of Brion Gysin’s Dream Machine to provide a space for reflection. The broken mirrors were intentionally added for the literal and conceptual reflective properties. This piece is effective when the viewer leans in with eyes closed. The darkness that usually partners the inside of the eyelids is replaced by color and light. The result signifies the self-reflective experience of transformation.

ALYSSA MARCUS

Branding as Power: An Interdisciplinary Approach

My thesis explores the conflicts and similarities that exist within the disciplines of marketing and communications. Branding is used as an outlet to explore the gaps and bridges among these two disparate yet connected fields of knowledge.

Branding has become incredibly influential in our everyday lives and this project seeks to explore and understand this power through the lens of both marketing and communications. Branding relies heavily on visual cues, along with information process­ing and persuasion. My thesis and visual component explore how a simple color or design can quickly evoke associations with an influential brand. This power becomes even more important when communicating health information. In order to explore the impact that these visual cues have on individuals, along with society, I have analyzed the approach that both fields take in order to understand tobacco branding and packaging. Through a research survey that I conducted on Amazon Mechanical Turk, I explored my questions that remained unanswered. The survey investigated the way brand loyalty influences consumers’ attention to different features of packaging such as warning labels.

How can the power of branding be used to positively influence health behaviors? How does brand loyalty and awareness impact our perception of certain images, colors, and products beyond cigarettes?

TAYLOR CAMPBELL

Lolita: A Cultural Image

Lolita: A Cultural Image explores the relationship between the book cover as an image and its greater context: How it relates to its text and how it is received by different individuals within their own contexts. Lolita is a book that has permeated our visual culture, and continues to do so. From Hollywood archetypes to fashion, loli-con fetish to pop music, Lolita continues to be reinterpreted in a skewed reflection of its original manifestation: a disturbing narrative of the sexual exploitation of a 12-year old girl transcribed in seductive, mesmerizing prose. Through censorship, cognitive dissonance, and the effects of pop culture, Lolita has come to represent something more than Nabokov could have ever imagined.

Viewed through different lenses, the text is interpreted in disparate ways. There is a naiveté offered by the nar­rator H. H.’s testimony of the relationship as a fanciful romance, and there is the understanding of the physical acts that blacklisted the book as debauchery.

CAROLINA ENGLISH

The Qualia of Limitation

This project’s overall goal is to understand two phenomenal experiences:

1) People’s agency in forming mental representations of the world and

2) People’s agency in responding to these representations.

I will explore people’s control over the world built in their own minds. I can study this by examining blind-sight cases. In these cases, patients are not consciously aware of their surrounding objects, but can still respond to them. In other words, they cannot to use their “what” pathway, but are able to utilize their “where/how” pathway. I will use these studies and optical illusions to simulate a blind-sight patient’s experience.

EMILY LIPSON

Human Connectivity Through Performance: A Response to Posthumanism

The goal of this thesis is to look at human connection both as art subject and as material for art-making. I investigate the digital social visual system that controls us, the role we play in it, and how performance can be used as an effective method to reclaim the power of both our bodies and our physical sociality. It is widely held that our current era marks a transition into posthumanism, where humans are not only inextricably linked with technology, but we are valued less for our ontological ability than our operational ability. A posthuman, then, is only concerned with problem-solving and not reflection or thought sans action. A posthuman world marks a significant loss for humans, signaling the rapid erosion of subjectivity and a shift away from activities that produce no tangible results, such as dance. A posthu­man world deems physical communication through gesture wholly unproductive. I argue that performance art offers a viable solution to reinstating the deteriorating elements of the primal human.

I created a dance ensemble with whom I worked over the duration of a semester to produce human connectivity through performance. Once a firm connection was established, the ensemble collaborated to create movement address­ing femininity, conformity, and productivity. The grid of screens shows disparate execution of the same choreography in the same garment in the same space. The movement aims to convey that, despite momentary togetherness, our digital social overload relegates us ultimately to isolation. In that isolated space, we may then connect with ourselves and our surroundings to reach a meditative state of connectivity unlike that of the social world we are used to. The other monitors display works of choreography, contact improvisation, and mimicry. Set in institutionalized spaces, the mim­icry series engages small pods of the ensemble, issuing a switch between leaders. It turns the system of conformity on its head, for in this space trust and physical communication are required for participation. The dance choreography, performed outdoors, aims to address the frustrating relationship women have to their femininity. You will see a marked shift between the romantic state of acceptance and an aversion to the controlled. 

 

View photos of the 2016 Visual Studies Senior Thesis Exhibition>