Date of Award
Spring 6-6-2021
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
Digital Media
First Advisor
Mark Cetilia
Second Advisor
Fletcher Bach
Third Advisor
Nora Khan
Abstract
This collection of stories takes place in a nearby dimension, in which objects and entities that are obsolete, mundane, discarded, or overlooked, define alternative rules for value and purpose. Here, a broken machine suffers an existential crisis while a hungry spider explores its interior; a dog imagines life as a moth; a feral creature escapes from a woman’s mind; and a worker suffers spam email induced headaches. United by the destructive capitalist logic of planned obsolescence and an attraction to blue light, these characters traverse mind, matter, metaphor, and technology to find their way into new forms, reinventing themselves and/as one another. This project seeks to disrupt cycles of waste and create space for alternatives to technological decay. Through exploring, confusing, and subverting the ways we are conditioned to engage with media and technology—what is considered safe, dangerous, desirable, valuable, meaningful, functional, or possible—this project proposes an alternative reality for those things we throw away.
Recommended Citation
Jarvinen, Kat, "Feral devices : an additive fabrication" (2021). Masters Theses. 634.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/634
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Comments
View exhibition online: Kat Jarvinen, The Reliquary of Feral Devices