Date of Award
Spring 5-31-2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
Digital Media
First Advisor
Shawn Greenlee, PhD
Second Advisor
Leah Beeferman, MFA
Third Advisor
Alex Chechile, PhD
Abstract
Resonance is a digital media installation intended to facilitate a deeper understanding of inter-connection within and between ourselves and others, and to depict how our voices live both within and beyond us. The exhibit is divided into two intertwining halves:
Externally, the piece involves creative communication between people, art mediums, and life experiences. This aspect includes the contributions of thirty patients, doctors, and caregivers who responded to one another’s artwork in a series of workshops led by the artist. Starting with the creative writing of patients, this was provided to a group of unrelated medical providers, who responded with visual artwork, and these pieces (sans the writing) were then provided to a group of unrelated caregivers, who responded with sound. The artist then combined these works into ten collaborative videos.
The interior aspect explores the artist’s personal resonance with the cancer within them. They wrote letters to their cancer and then fed these into a custom Python program which remixed the words to create the cancer's responses (just as cancer remixes one’s own cells). This was then utilized in a sculptural piece: a plaster cast of the artist’s body with sixteen holes in places where cancer was present. Within each hole is a speaker, and each speaker is playing the artist’s voice at different pitches, reading the cancer's responses. Hanging above the sculpture is a divinatory pendulum made of yew wood on a platinum wire, as their chemotherapy consisted of taxol (derived from yew trees) and cisplatin (derived from platinum).
Recommended Citation
Skyleson, Jess D., "Resonance" (2025). Masters Theses. 1367.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/1367
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Included in
Audio Arts and Acoustics Commons, Creative Writing Commons, Digital Humanities Commons, Film and Media Studies Commons, Fine Arts Commons, Interdisciplinary Arts and Media Commons, Medical Humanities Commons, Sculpture Commons