Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2003, Art Education

Net.art is an art form that uses the Internet as a medium, and has been created specifically for viewing on the World Wide Web. For the art instructor whose curriculum includes art criticism, art history and aesthetics with studio activities, including net.art in such a way that encourages critical thinking and new perspectives on art as well as the Internet is a daunting challenge. The art instructor needs the computer skills necessary to assist students in creating net.art, as well as an understanding of the cultural, technological and theoretical underpinnings of net.art in order to demystify it for students. Net.art tends to be highly conceptual, strongly challenges commonly held notions regarding art, and often requires the viewer to have some knowledge of the history of the Internet. It also requires the viewer to understand the Internet as a cultural phenomenon rather than a technological tool. My primary empirical objective was to formulate effective pedagogical strategies for the high school art instructor incorporating net.art into their curriculum in such a way that would facilitate students' critical thinking, meaning making, and deeper understanding of the cultural aspects of the Internet. The principal research question is: how can net.art be integrated into a high-school level computer art and graphics curriculum? Over the course of the study, the principal investigator engaged in reflective practices that enabled her to devise pedagogical strategies that, in turn, facilitated a demystification process that enabled the students to overcome their initial disorientation and became increasingly able to appreciate and understand net.art. Despite the students' familiarity with the Internet and traditional art forms, however, they were not able to translate their knowledge gained from these experiences into an adequate vocabulary in which to describe and interpret net.art as an artistic form When asked to compare the web sites they are more accustomed to wi (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Vesta Daniel (Advisor) Subjects: Education, Art; Fine Arts

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2021, Art

Generations of my bloodline settled across Appalachia, down to the swamps of Florida, and out past the hollows of Tennessee. During the lockdown of 2020, I researched where my kin has been. Looking past the stories that have been passed down and digested, I instead sought the stories kept alive in census records and jail files and gravestone decor. I wanted their dirt. I gathered soil from their farms and homesteads and mixed each clump with porcelain, and pinched each blended wad between my thumb and palm. Sterilizing their dirt with heat, I wanted to wipe clean their stolen sustenance through the ceramic process— to petrify them in some small way. I craved a retort bigger than my body, one that would stretch out past my lifespan and last for millennia. To archive the lot of them in a heap too big to carry, but too labored to leave. After the frenzy of finding and rolling and pinching dirt from across the country together with pure porcelain from Florida, I digested my unearthing by spinning and looping and tugging thread into patterns; by holding tension. I attempted to lace it all up— though I know this is just the start. Winding and twisting my wrists while I wove, while I untwisted the tales passed down as truth. These frail threads— these small gestures— when amassed, have begun to tug at the grounded heap of dirt I've collected.

Committee: Steven Thurston (Advisor); Laura Lisbon (Committee Member); Jeffrey Haase (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts