Date of Award
Spring 5-30-2016
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
Graphic Design
First Advisor
Thomas Ockerse
Second Advisor
Bethany Johns
Third Advisor
Nancy Skolos
Abstract
The impact of the Internet and digitization is pervasive and pervious. Users constantly interface with a constructed virtual world of worlds, simulated by signs and representations. The web content appears to exist but only fades into oblivion. Digital imageries promise the HD real but can never be as phenomenal as our physical experience, and instead render an alternative fantasy of deceptive factuality. This is a hyperlinked network of data and pixel information that takes no solid permanent shape, and claims zero responsibility for altering and molding our consciousness in this technological fiction.
Dimensional Flatland: Beamer, Drone & Flash Drive responds to such phenomena with provocative and poetic gestures: The work appropriates the views of the machines, whose logic and illogic I employ to generate an abstract realm to criticize and dramatize, and to represent the simulated immaterial world in conflict with the “real” material one with which we are familiar. It probes into the mechanism of realism through digital imaging, and examines different modes of expression and representation with self-criticality.
Graphic design deals more and more frequently with screen-based media, and yet the screen is not a neutral medium but an aggressive glow. Our spectatorship with thescreen has transformed from a pure fascination into a desire for participation and intervention— from an outside position to a critical insider role. Unveiling the invisible and intangible mechanism behind the screen, this thesis presents a series of work that liberates digital tools from their prescriptive functional constraints, traces back to the point of origin, and evokes our very sensibility and imagination in the hyperspace.
Recommended Citation
Meng, Scarlett Xin, "Dimensional flatland: Beamer, drone, flash drive" (2016). Masters Theses. 30.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/30
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