DMA, University of Cincinnati, 2007, College-Conservatory of Music : Clarinet

John Adams's clarinet concerto Gnarly Buttons, now more than ten years old, fuses post-minimalism, post-Stravinsky techniques, and American vernacular idioms, holding a unique place in the clarinet repertoire and serving as an important marker in Adams's evolution of compositional style that began in the 1990s. The stylistic point of departure is his 1991 opera The Death of Klinghoffer, and Gnarly Buttons is among the pieces that continues to develop the textural and melodic innovations that Klinghoffer started. Thus, full comprehension of the style and aesthetic of Gnarly Buttons depends on an understanding of the stylistic traits established by Adams's compositions from the 1980s combined with an examination of innovations in the 1990s. This document offers an account of the history of the work, centered on information of those interviewed for this project, including John Adams, Michael Collins, Paul Meecham and William Helmers. The performance guide that follows also incorporates information from recent performances, especially from the January 2007 performance with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, John Adams conducting, and Derek Bermel as soloist. The last section of the document offers analysis, tracing Adams's style from Nixon in China, through The Death of Klinghoffer, and finally to Gnarly Buttons, showing how the concerto both incorporates and builds on Adams's own compositional past.

Committee: Dr. Robert Zierolf (Advisor) Subjects: Music

MFA, Kent State University, 2021, College of the Arts / School of Art

These large-scale oil paintings on panel pair down simple, anthropomorphized shapes in an effort to explore the formal elements of painting and color theory while simultaneously creating tension and humor through color, edges, and texture. In utilizing color theory to create color relationships that result in sensory optical experiences upon viewing, I can trick my viewer into seeing colors as other than themselves, adding a layer of humor to the production of the works. This tool is also used to create depth, creating space within the paintings more easily translatable to the viewer as a livable space, reinforcing the idea that the shapes they are seeing could be human ones. Adding another layer of humor is the rounded shapes utilized in the work, often hard to describe as anything other than a tangible common object such as a balloon, lozenge, or worm. The shapes morph between purely formal explorations and anatomical depictions, adding a sense of playfulness to the compositions. The introduction of curved shapes allows for a push back against the bravado of minimalism and geometric abstraction I have experienced as a female artist in those fields, adding feelings of awkwardness and tension that mimic my own in relationship to those ideas.

Committee: Gianna Commito (Advisor); Shawn Powell (Committee Member); Peter Johnson (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Akron, 2020, Marriage and Family Counseling/Therapy

Minimalism aids in the elimination life's excess and allows for focus on the essentials, happiness, fulfillment, and freedom. Benefits of a minimalistic lifestyle include reclaiming time and the elimination of excess. Minimalism is a topic yet to be explored by marriage and family therapists (MFTs). Medical family therapy (MedFT) is a systemic, biopsychosocial model utilized to provide therapeutic services to patients and their families who are experiencing or have experienced physical health problems. The research question driving this study asks, how could benefits of minimalism be understood from MedFT lens? Descriptives, frequencies, correlations, t-tests, ANOVAs, and hierarchical multiple regressions were conducted to answer three research questions. Results found that materialist values are a statistically significant predictor of relational satisfaction and mental health. Additionally, results indicated that materialist values are not a statistically significant predictor of physical health. Limitations of the study, implications for clinical practice, and future directions are discussed.

Committee: Rikki Patton Ph.D. (Advisor); Heather Katafiasz Ph.D. (Committee Member); David Tefteller Ph.D. (Committee Member); Owens Delila Ph.D. (Committee Member); Weigold Ingrid Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Counseling Education; Health; Mental Health; Therapy

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2020, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture

The continuing migration of tech workers have created a variety of architectural conditions in San Francisco; such as an abundance of luxury housing and lack of affordable or market rate housing. Renting a room is standard for professionals living in the city and many rooms do not offer living rooms or communal spaces for gathering, so much of the population is limited to just their personal box, their room. The displacement of San Francisco's diversity has created a distaste within the native population towards the tech companies and their growing influence on art, architecture and culture. The city of San Francisco's unique mild climate, beautiful landscape and architecture, sociable reputation, as well as the rich 220 public parks create a park atmosphere like no other city in the United States. San Francisco's parks are commonly populated year round, full of people exercising, playing games, gathering, drinking, reading, playing music and so on, these lively green spaces are one of the trademarks of the outgoing city. This need for a space to gather does not get filled in winter months when the wind and rain pick up and the sun sets early making the once friendly park seem dark and uninviting. This natural transformation into winter is one that decreases the quality of life for those who rely on the park and are living in tight rooms without any communal space to gather. The lively character of San Francisco parks and the utility they provide for the local population at all hours creates an architectural opportunity to intervene and provide the same quality of utility or better for the locals in the winter time. The final interventions of this thesis are the conclusion of many permeations for interventions that formally respond to the defined 5 spatial parameters inherent in to all parks. Nearly all successful public parks can be organized into 5 key fundamental spatial characteristics: frame, enclosure, path, field, and slope. Identifying these modes of (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Michael McInturf M.Arch. (Committee Chair); Elizabeth Riorden M.Arch. (Committee Member) Subjects: Architecture

MS, University of Cincinnati, 2019, Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services: Information Technology

Minimalistic design has reduced complexity in much of the technology we use today making it accessible to a wider audience of users. The principles of minimalistic design are especially impactful for the design of mobile applications, the most successful of which attempt to minimize the amount of user input needed to provide users with information they are seeking. Many mobile applications leverage affordances of smartphones to reduce user input, such as GPS to deduce location, but a challenge is presented when designing a minimalist application that is based on a process that typically requires a great deal of user input. This thesis works to address this challenge by engaging end users in a process to identify the Minimal Criteria necessary for users to input in order to achieve desired output from a mobile application. Minimal criteria is a novel concept applied to the design work in this thesis and can benefit other mobile applications that require a large amount of user input. A user-driven process to identify minimal criteria is described in this thesis by leveraging the RoomUP mobile application as a testbed. One context where a great deal of user input is typically necessary is roommate matching. This study seeks to reduce the complexity involved in the roommate matching process by applying principles of minimalism. Universities traditionally make use of mailed forms that ask students to answer many non-research-based questions to determine roommate compatibility. Unfortunately, this traditional process is viewed by today's students as tedious and often produces inaccurate results. This thesis begins with a review of roommate compatibility studies that help identify variables that are proven to result in effective matching such as cleanliness, noise levels, and sleeping habits. It then leverages these variables in a design activity with end users of a roommate matching mobile application. RoomUP is an existing mobile application that helps match students (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jess Kropczynski Ph.D. (Committee Chair); James Scott (Committee Member) Subjects: Information Technology

Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, 2016, English

This thesis consists of five original short stories and a critical introduction in which I explore my notion of "quiet realism." Quiet realism is the lens through which I seek to describe, explore, and understand the stories and writers that have inspired the writing of these stories. Quiet realism has much to do with the inner life—what is not quite visible and what often is difficult to say.

Committee: Patrick O'Keeffe (Advisor) Subjects: Literature

Master of Music (MM), Ohio University, 2017, Music Composition (Fine Arts)

Pulse Patterns is a work for string orchestra and three percussionists. Its rhythmic material explores the use of several speed ratios such as 4:3, 5:2, 5:4, and 3:2 as well as the layering of meters such as 9/8 time superimposed on a 4/4 pulse. The realization of rhythmic complexity in a large ensemble makes the distribution of rhythmic layers a primary issue. The pitched, hollow, wooden sound of the extended technique of col legno battuto serves as a basis for the timbre of the piece. To achieve this sound, the string player turns the bow and taps the strings with the wood of the bow. Approximately 11 minutes in length, the piece continually builds and subsides until the final violent chords.

Committee: Mark Phillips (Committee Chair); Richard Wetzel (Committee Member); Evan Antonellis (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Music

BA, Oberlin College, 1987, English

In American critical writing of the last decade, the term "minimalism", which first came into use to describe a particular aesthetic, a distinctive style of art, has begun to be used in a very different context. In literary reviews and essays it is now most frequently employed as a convenient critical label, a catchall phrase which purportedly refers to a new "reigning style" in contemporary fiction. This style in turn is generally thought to be the exclusive domain of a certain generation of writers. Roughly, the birth years of this generation could be said to span the period 1935-50; thus, a collection of its best-known "spokespeople" can include writers of as wide a range of age and background as Raymond Carver, Ann Beattie, Richard Ford, and Mary Robison.The term "minimalism" is now being used as a stylistic category in which to group these writers. Generally speaking, the hallmarks of this style are considered to be an everyday, unadorned narrative voice; a preoccupation with details of domestic life; a cast of characters united by (if nothing else) a sort of common fecklessness; and, finally, an overall mood of anomie. This last generalization is especially significant--for it refers, after all, not so much to a stylistic quality itself as to the psychological effect of certain qualities of style. A story is now termed "minimalist" when the subJective feeling it produces in the reader is one of uncertainty, frustration, lack of resolution. Thus, as a stylistic categorization the term is clearly, in much current critical writing, being very loosely and clumsily applied. As a literary category, it has in current usage lost almost all its original historical meaning, become merely a fashionable umbrella term, which is as often used to denigrate as simply to describe. It is this denigrating tendency that I find most disturbing about the way the term is presently being used, and which, through a more considered investigation of the historical meaning of the term, (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Pat Day (Advisor) Subjects: Aesthetics; Literature

M.M., University of Cincinnati, 2012, College-Conservatory of Music: Composition

Perihelion is an example of post modern eclecticism in that within this singular piece, multiple genres come together to form a unified entity. Elements such as minimalism, post minimalism, post-rock, progressive rock, and avant-garde converge to form a whole. The exploration of the Moog electric guitar, an instrument which can sustain pitches infinitely, adds to the progressive rock feel of the piece, which is already constantly shifting from duple to triple meter, much like many progressive rock groups. The implementation of radios and television sets allots an experimental edge to this piece and verges on avant-gardism in it's approach to using noise-generating objects to project sound into a musical space otherwise dominated by traditional musical instruments. The main inspiration for this piece is the astronomical event of an actual perihelion, which is when, in the earth's orbit around the sun, there is the least amount of distance between the earth and the sun. This event is treated metaphorically within the piece and is represented through the music; the final zenith nearing the end of the piece represents the final apotheosis, and thereafter, the listener gradually drifts away from the point at which they were closest to the sun as they will ever get, then back into orbit, going farther away from the sun until the next annual occurrence of the perihelion.

Committee: Mara Helmuth DMA (Committee Chair); Mike Fiday PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

DMA, University of Cincinnati, 2012, College-Conservatory of Music: Composition

The work consists of two contrasting panels. The first panel reflects life; the second, death. While grieving over the recent death of someone in my life, I sketched two separate formal shapes that would eventually become the basis of “Reflections.” The resulting music adheres to the shapes that I sketched. This piece, in which I integrated elements of minimalism, jazz, progressive rock, and sound mass composition, is scored for saxophone quartet (alto, alto, tenor, baritone), and amplified acoustic guitar. In addition to this version, there is an alternate version of this piece, which is scored for horn quartet and amplified acoustic guitar.

Committee: Mike Fiday PhD (Committee Chair); Mara Helmuth DMA (Committee Member); Joel Hoffman DMA (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 1976, Art

Committee: Gilbert Hall (Advisor) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2004, Art

This dissertation considers the proliferation of mirrors and reflective materials in art since the 1960s through four case studies. By analyzing the mirrored and reflective work of Robert Rauschenberg, Gerhard Richter, Dan Graham and Robert Smithson within the context of the artists' larger oeuvre and also the theoretical and self-reflective writing that surrounds each artist's work, the relationship between the wide use of industrially-produced materials and the French theory that dominated artistic discourse for the past thirty years becomes clear. Chapter 2 examines the work of Robert Rauschenberg, noting his early interest in engaging the viewer's body in his work – a practice that became standard with the rise of Minimalism and after. Additionally, the theoretical writing of the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty provides insight into the link between art as a mirroring practice and physically engaged viewer. Chapter 3 considers the questions of medium and genre as they arose in the wake of Minimalism, using the mirrors and photo-based paintings of Gerhard Richter as its focus. It also addresses the particular way that Richter weaves the motifs and concerns of traditional painting into a rhetoric of the death of painting which strongly implicates the mirror, ultimately opening up Richter's career to a psychoanalytic reading drawing its force from Jacques Lacan's writing on the formation of the subject. Chapter 4 extends these considerations to address the role of the viewer and the question of time and history through an analysis of the work and writing of Dan Graham, which draw both on Merleau-Ponty's and Lacan's theories of vision. And finally, Chapter 5 focuses on the work, writings and aesthetic theory of Robert Smithson, addressing the way that Smithson explicitly put his art and writing into an interdependent relationship, insisting that art is ultimately displaced into writing. Taken together, the case studies describe the way reflection, both (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Stephen Melville (Advisor) Subjects: Art History; Philosophy

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2011, English (Arts and Sciences)

The thesis is a collection of stories and poems. In the critical preface, I point out some thematic intersections in the work of poets and fictionists who have influenced my writing. I further illustrate similar technical devices deployed by writers in both genres. I argue that while these techniques are similar, the effect depends upon the conventions and expectations within the respective genres.

Committee: Darrell Spencer PhD (Committee Chair); Mark Halliday PhD (Committee Member); Jill Rosser PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2007, Art History (Fine Arts)

This thesis will examine Grace Jones in 1982's One Man Show. Based on live concerts filmed in London and New York, the video serves as an archive of Jones's experimental work in music. Whereas her character roles in films such as Conan the Destroyerand A View to Killembodied common stereotypes about black sexuality, her music repudiates these traditional roles. One Man Showillustrates Jones's increased control in the production of her image. She combined visual references to industrial society, primitivism, and fashion with music that provided an alternative narrative to our cultural history. By doing this, Jones exemplified the cooperative aspect of popular culture and its public, which is far from passively watching. I would like to explore the relationship between Grace Jones, the persona that she created in performance, and the significance of the persona in popular culture.

Committee: Jeannette Klein (Advisor) Subjects:

MA, Kent State University, 2010, College of the Arts / School of Music, Hugh A. Glauser

Four Fluctuations is a four movement work for large chamber ensemble or chamber orchestra. Using my experience composing for large chamber wind groups, jazz big band, orchestra, and small chamber wind groups, Four Fluctuations attempts to explore elements of these ensembles in terms of their texture and instrumentation. The instrumentation is as follows: Flute; Oboe; Clarinet in B-flat; Bass Clarinet in B-flat; Soprano Saxophone; Alto Saxophone; Bassoon; Horn in F; Percussion: Bass Drum, Tenor Drum, Snare Drum, Suspended Cymbal, Splash Cymbal, and China Cymbal; Orchestra Bells; Marimba; Piano; Strings: Violin I & II, Viola, Cello, and Double Bass In part, this work focuses on utilizing its instrumentation to achieve unpredictability through texture, rhythm, harmonic language, and orchestration. The work employs various compositional techniques to achieve this, including implied meter, polyrhythm, rhythmic ostinato, juxtaposition, and elision of thematic material. At any time the listener should be able to hear elements of woodwind quintet, orchestra, jazz instrumentation, wind ensemble, and a unique blend of these various textures. It is my hope that through these various compositional techniques, instrumentation orchestration choices, and through the work's rhythmic and harmonic language, the idea of “fluctuations” is made obvious to the listener.

Committee: Frank Wiley PhD (Advisor); Thomas Janson (Committee Member); Chas Baker (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Music

MA, Kent State University, 2010, College of the Arts / School of Art

The work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres reflected the profound impact of AIDS on American society and those living with the disease during the late 1980s and 1990s. Gonzalez-Torres who was both homosexual and HIV positive, created artworks to eulogize the loss of his partner, and incorporated a message of love to transcend societal prejudices against those in the gay community living with AIDS. Gonzalez-Torres simplified his artistic compositions to redefine the role of the viewer, author and the function of postmodern art. Gonzalez-Torres included and reinterpreted early postmodern art practices of the mid-1960s, such as Minimalism and Conceptualism into his artworks so that a new generation could be exposed to these groundbreaking movements. He incorporated the viewer as an integral component of the compositions; their participation was necessary to complete the meaning found in his artworks. Gonzalez-Torres encouraged the viewer to interact, take parts of the artworks with them, and at times even take creative control over the installation of the artworks. By doing so he created an intimate bond between the viewer and subject that resulted in a loving and unified community.

Committee: Navjotika Kumar PhD (Committee Chair); Fred Smith PhD (Committee Co-Chair); Gustav Medicus PhD (Committee Member); Diane Scillia PhD (Committee Member); Carol Salus PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Art History

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2011, German

This study examines Steve Reich's reflections on his early works in the context of Walter Benjamin's thesis in “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility.” While Reich's thoughts as expressed in interviews and selected writings show a similar attitude to Benjamin's toward changes in human perception, Benjamin's notion of auratic demise in the age of technical reproducibility is challenged by Reich's understanding of the role of technology in music and the effects of gradual musical processes. Reich's assertions regarding the aesthetic autonomy of his compositional process are reminiscent of Romantic ideals of art, particularly those embodied by the “poeticized” as defined by Benjamin in “Two Poems by Friedrich Holderlin.” However, the means by which Reich claims to have reintroduced artistic autonomy are those that Benjamin attributes to aura's deterioration, such as impersonality and gradual presentation of the artistic subject. This study determines that, while Reich uses mechanical process to accommodate the change in human perception as Benjamin anticipates, aura is not eliminated as proposed in “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility.” Although the “here and now” of the original is destroyed, aura survives through the authority and transcendent nature of musical process, and singularity is achieved by the unique reception of individual audience members with each hearing. Reich's work may not politicize aesthetics as Benjamin predicts, but through the authority of autonomous musical process and the decentralization of interpretation, the fascist aestheticization of politics may still be averted in the age of technical reproducibility.

Committee: Edgar Landgraf Dr. (Advisor); Geoffrey Howes Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Germanic Literature