Fine Arts, Faculty of

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    Sehnsucht and alienation in Schubert's Mignon settings / Acacia M. Doktorchik
    (Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Dept. of Music, c2011, 2011) Doktorchik, Acacia M.; University of Lethbridge. Faculty of Fine Arts; Black, Brian;
    Sehnsucht (longing) and alienation were two central themes of 19th century German Romanticism in literature, music and art. Franz Schubert was one of the great masters of the Romantic era to understand and express these intense emotions through his compositions. This paper discusses Sehnsucht and alienation in Schubert’s settings of the Mignon songs from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehjahre (Master William’s Apprenticeship). Mignon, a secondary character in this novel, is a prime example of one who experiences these emotions and whose principal medium of expressing herself is through her five songs. My thesis focuses on how Schubert portrays Mignon’s longing through use of dissonance, harmonic progressions, melodic contour and shifts in vocal register.
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    From our sex to our souls : directing Michel Marc Bouchard’s The Madonna painter
    (Lethbridge. Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Department of Theatre and Dramatic Arts, 2012) Guist, Sean; University of Lethbridge. Faculty of Fine Arts; Whitehead, Jay; Hanrahan, Gail
    Michel Marc Bouchard calls his play, . a parable of lies disguised as a fable; writ in scarlet pigment, in holy wine and hemoglobin, all the shades of red that flow through us from our sex to our souls (9).” Using these vivid statements as a starting point, I explore my process, inspiration, concepts and choices for the University of Lethbridge production of The Madonna Painter, March 20 to 24, 2012, in partial fulfillment for the degree Master of Fine Arts.
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    The corrosive moment : a look at the apocalyptic glitch
    (Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Dept. of New Media, c2012, 2012) Blicharz, Marta; Luce, Emily
    This thesis focuses on the contextualization of my artistic practice, which explores digital glitch as a disruptive force and an aesthetic treatment in the contemporary technological world. While the body of work draws on the methodology of glitch art, this paper attempts to relate the idea of glitch to a wider range of philosophical and artistic frameworks stemming from Lettrism, Situationist International, Punk, and Nihilism. The aim of this investigation of a digital disturbance through its categorization into natural, stimulated and assimilated glitch, is to facilitate an understanding of the glitch event as both something threatening and attractive, while it transitions from a spontaneous to a controlled process in a photoreal image. The passing of the destructive glitch from life to art is placed against the backdrop of the apocalypse, which one may imagine as a literal and metaphorical disaster in the physical world and value systems of western society.
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    I am not a ceramicist
    (Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Dept. of Art, c2012, 2012) Porcina, Mark; Campbell, Michael
    Ceramics has always existed on the fringes of craft and high art. The purpose of this thesis project is to elevate clay beyond the traditions of craft by examining the historical use of clay and the everyday object. My research looks specifically at works by Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons and Jasper Johns in order to examine the origin of displaying the massproduced object and reflecting upon it’s validity as high status art object. In this project I am also interested in infrastructural systems within modern architecture-- plumbing, wiring, heat ducts vents-- with a specific focus on systems lurking inside walls and how these function to influence architectural space. With the advent of modern plumbing, concealing these elements was adopted as the new standard and still exists today. Through the presentation of defamiliarized handmade objects, my exhibition presents the appearance of manufactured material through the serial manipulation of scale, surface and quantity. The result reveals a clay piece that renders the material unrecognizable providing the viewer with a new view on the object's tradition.
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    Collaboration and the creation of a new piece of music : an analysis of the roles played by composer, poet, and singer in William Bolcom's Briefly it enters for soprano and piano
    (Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Faculty of Fine Arts, 2012) Sinnott, Rachel; University of Lethbridge. Faculty of Fine Arts; Youngdahl, Janet
    This document looks at American composer William Bolcom’s song cycle Briefly It Enters, from a collaborative standpoint. The cycle was written with soprano Benita Valente in mind and the poetry is taken from the work of American poet Jane Kenyon. Chapter one of the thesis offers a brief history of the practice of writing for specific singers among composers in Europe and the United States. Chapter two provides biographical information about the participants involved in the project. The third chapter narrates a timeline of events leading up to the work’s premiere; chapter four is a musical analysis of the cycle from a singer’s standpoint. Included within chapter four are ideas about the poetry, vocal considerations for Valente, and the effect of Kenyon’s death upon the creation of this work. The fifth chapter provides insight for performers who wish to learn and perform this cycle in the future.
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    Hamlet : the design as process
    (Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Dept. of Theatre and Dramatic Arts, c2012, 2012) Barrus, David W.; Schultz, Roger
    This thesis represents the written portion of the Degree Requirements of the Master of Fine Arts in Theatre Design. The Thesis production of HAMLET, by Wm. Shakespeare (edited by Brian C. Parkinson), was the University of Lethbridge Department of Theatre and Dramatic Arts third show of the 2011 – 2012 Mainstage Theatre season, running February 14 – 18, 2012, performed at the University Theatre in the University of Lethbridge Centre for the Arts, Lethbridge, Alberta. HAMLET was directed by Brian C. Parkinson, with the assistant direction of L. Jay Whitehead and Yvonne Mandel. Contained within this written portion of the thesis is a discussion of the design concepts for this production, along with photographic records of models, technical drawings, and other pertinent information.
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    Some nerve: invisible debilitations, explosive restraint and the in-valid
    (Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Faculty of Fine Arts, 2014, 2013) Thiessen Hepher, Corinne; University of Lethbridge. Faculty of Fine Arts; Kavanagh, Mary;
    Some Nerve: Invisible Debilitations, Explosive Restraint and the In-Valid engages sociological, critical and feminist frameworks to examine the cultural and political encoding of normative human behaviour. Through kinetic objects, drawing, photography, video and performance, my work considers marginalized others and the subversive destabilization or appropriation of identity and subjectivity available in theories of the grotesque, in body art, and in autobiography. Personal historiographies, transgenerational trauma, and postmemory together form the investigative structure of collective identity and personal narrative. The new, embodied postmodern subject embraces identity that is unstable, open, changing, and that blurs the lines between self and other. By drawing parallels to historical medical and psychoanalytical treatments, I look at contemporary discursive methods that pathologize bodies and behaviours and construct “disease.” Prosthetics and body restraints become metaphorical indicators of social constraint and civic silencing. Inspired by literature, popular culture, science fiction, and self-help books, my work explores physical and ideological impediments, interpersonal conflict, explosion and restraint, repression and acting out. A Nervous System is not only a vital system inherent in an individual body; systems of nervousness also signal a condition of cultural anxiety produced by precarious political and institutional power structures.
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    Dr. Soanes' Odditorium of Wonders : the 19th century dime museum in a contemporary context
    (Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Dept. of Arts, c2013, 2013) Edmundson, Jane; University of Lethbridge. Faculty of Fine Arts; Mills, Josephine; Ramp, William
    19th century dime museums were a North American phenomenon that flourished in urban centres from the mid- to late-1800s. Named thusly due to their low admission cost, dime museums provided democratic entertainment that was promoted to all classes as affordable and respectable. The resulting facilities were crammed with art, artifacts, rarities, living human curiosities, theatre performances, menageries, and technological marvels. The exhibition Dr. Soanes’ Odditorium of Wonders strives to recapture the spirit and aesthetic of the dime museum to invoke wonder in the viewer and to combine art, artifacts, and oddities to provoke questions about the boundary between education and amusement. Both the academic and curatorial texts utilize a mix of methodological approaches appropriate to museology, art history and cultural history: theoretical research into historiographical issues concerning theories of display and spectacle; archival research and discourse analysis of historical documents, and material culture analysis (including the semiotics of display).
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    Imagining fantastica : the direction and puppet design of The Neverending Story
    (Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Dept. of Theaatre and Dramatic Arts, 2013, 2013) Legg, Andrew Steven; University of Lethbridge. Faculty of Fine Arts; Hanson, Nicholas
    In the The Neverending Story, a novel by Michael Ende adapted for the stage by David S. Craig, the child protagonist reads a fantastical world into existence. When directing and puppet designing a theatre production of The Neverending Story at the University of Lethbridge in February of 2013,1 sought to populate that world using mundane objects and character situations from the real world, repurposed into object puppets and animated by actor-puppeteers. In this paper, I assess the conception, design and performance of puppets in my production of The Neverending Story.
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    A new six-mallet marimba technique and its pedagogical approach
    (Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Dept. of Music, c2013, 2013) Porter, Joe; Mason, Adam
    This thesis presents a six-mallet technique developed by the author along with a pedagogical guide teaching that technique. Included in the thesis are the following components: 1) a DVD which demonstrates how to learn the technique, with performances of significant compositions for six mallets; and 2) a pedagogical survey of recommended works written for six mallets on a scale from relatively simple to highly complex, giving students a repertoire of pieces from which they can develop six-mallet marimba technique.
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    Here | Now | Look | See: information visualizations of recent climate records in Alberta
    (Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Dept. of New Media, 2014, 2014) Clark, Christine; Elias, Leanne
    This thesis is an analysis of the application of information visualization and design to wicked problems, a class of problems whose complexity, interconnectedness and fluctuation make them extremely difficult to resolve, and serves as a supporting document for my studio research and practice. In this paper I identify challenges that emerge with information visualizations of wicked problems and describe methods for addressing these challenges through my practice-based research project. Using climate data provided by Dr. Stefan W. Kienzle, Associate Professor of Hydrology and GIS at the University of Lethbridge, my research project attempts to use information visualization to communicate the climate data by applying design strategies that explore the relationship between aesthetic and functionality.
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    Mobile : painting as a practice of peregrination
    (Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Dept. of Art, 2014) Djaballah, Anne-Laure; Dahle, Dagmar
    Walking is a practice which parallels and criss-crosses my painting practice. Each mutually informs the other, creating a mobile with which I think about and experience the world. Before seeking to elucidate the knowledge that has developed therein, I reflect on the resistance visual art places on language, and consider the difference between art theory and a theory of practice. I delineate foundational ideas pertaining to the experience of the creative process and the studio, and link these thoughts to aspects of walking. The appendix contains a complete reproduction of the pages of a publication made to accompany my thesis exhibition. This document constitutes the crux of my work. It is a compendium of fragments; stories, questions, images and quotes pertaining to my studio practice. In both form and style, it seeks to communicate authentically the aspects of my practice that refuse straightforward written definition.
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    "Plein de feu, plein d'audace, plein de change" : examining the role of the Méthode de violon in the establishment of the French Violin School
    (Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Dept. of Music, 2014) Robinson, Airdrie Kalyn; University of Lethbridge. Faculty of Fine Arts; Visentin, Peter
    In 1782, Italian violinist Giovanni Battista Viotti performed in the Concerts spirituels of Paris, causing a sensation with his new style of playing, deemed “plein de feu, plein d’audace,” “full of fire, full of audacity.” This paper discusses Viotti’s style in the context of his use of the Tourte bow and “modernized” model of Stradivarius violin. Viotti’s chief disciples were French violin virtuosi Rodolphe Kreutzer, Pierre Rode and Pierre Baillot. As inaugural professors of the Paris Conservatoire, they championed Viotti's musical aesthetic and created pedagogical materials enabling others to emulate it. In 1803, Kreutzer, Rode and Baillot collaborated to produce Méthode de Violon, a technique manual expounding Viotti’s style and establishing a French Violin School of performance practice. This thesis identifies idiomatic signature elements of this style in the Méthode and comments upon the significance of the Conservatoire’s standardization of instruction, both of which prove foundational to the legacy of the French Violin School.
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    Digital imperfections : analog processes in 21st century cinema
    (Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Dept. of New Media, 2014) Evernden, Christopher Blake; Taylor, Aaron; Olsen, Deric
    Present day cinema’s singular pursuit of digital visual effects has resulted in a perceptual alienation of the audience due to missing constructive collaboration between artist and audience resulting from the imperfect mix of multiple analog and digital sources in the creation of the illusions. The digital’s ability to represent anything and everything on its own reduces the viewer to a mere spectator and no longer an imaginative participant. The reintroduction of imperfect analog effects, married to the digital medium, allows the viewer to contribute to the illusion rather than be pushed away by the perfectionist digital rendering that does not require their assistance. Both absence and imperfection are essential to selling the illusions of the cinematic landscape. This thesis project, the feature film Prairie Dog, is designed to address this singular digital disconnect in present day cinematic illusions by creating and experimenting in a variety of analog effects in combination with digital processing to illustrate the viability of analog incorporation in present day digital cinema.
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    The missing body: performance in the absence of the artist
    (Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Dept. of Art., 2014-10-03) Baker, Cindy; Fredrickson, Denton
    This thesis explores performance through an investigation of art in which the artist’s body is obscured, hidden, or not present in the final manifestation of the work. Through a three-pronged project of creative production, written paper and curated exhibition, I present four methodologies for removing the artist’s body from performance; work that engages others to enact the performance, work that is activated, created or completed by audience transgressions in the presentation space, object-based artworks that are stand-ins for the artists’ bodies, and artists whose bodies are hidden within the work. These methodologies are effective in opening dialogue about concepts that are otherwise difficult to broach, particularly those topics that address corporeality and identity. I discuss my own work, which deals with the taboo body, particularly as it relates to gender, sexuality, disability and fatness. Simultaneously, I examine works by a variety of artists using similar methodological strategies to address topics such as race, nationalism, transgression, the grotesque, and the uncanny in ways that engage their audiences in meaningful and lasting dialogue.
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    A comprehensive performance project in horn literature, with an essay : selected Handel vocal arias repurposed as horn repertoire
    (Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Dept. of Music, 2015) Viejou, Sarah D.; University of Lethbridge. Faculty of Fine Arts; Staples, Thomas W.
    At present there is a lack of music for the horn player who wishes to advance from beginning study to more difficult repertoire. This collection of fourteen pieces has been created to fit into this gap and to provide the horn player with an opportunity to develop necessary skills for advancing, including finger technique, increased range, ornamentation, and musicality. The pieces in the collection are transcribed from the da capo arias of the operas and oratorios of George Frideric Handel, according to specific criteria, and they have been edited in ways that may interest, aid, and motivate the advancing player. There are certain learning outcomes and planned goals for the études, and it is hoped that both teachers and players will find them to be of great value.
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    Optimum height for surround recordings with height channels
    (Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Dept. of Music, 2015) Li, Yangke; University of Lethbridge. Faculty of Fine Arts; Schaller, Thilo
    This research investigates the perceptional qualities of various microphone distances between the low channel microphones and height channel microphones in order to decide optimum height for height microphones in three-dimensional acoustic recordings. First, the thesis introduces information about the added value of the height channels in audio recording, and then it presents the development of recording techniques and technology, and the current knowledge and limitations of the related recording methods. Next, the thesis discusses the methodology and the process of the research, followed by data analysis, discussion and conclusions about a listening test involving multiple distances between lower and height channels. Finally, the limitations of the research are addressed and suggestions for future research are offered. The results of the listening test show significant results on depth perception and envelopment. However, the rest of the results show no major significant difference between the perceptions of different height channel setups.
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    The Past, present, and future in John Greer's The Red red heart
    (Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Dept. of Music, 2015) Wittig, Megan L; University of Lethbridge. Faculty of Fine Arts; Hendsbee, Blaine
    A psychological narrative from nostalgia to optimism binds the songs in John Greer’s cycle The Red Red Heart together. In the first two songs, images of the present are viewed with fear, discomfort, and confusion while images of the past are viewed with optimistic nostalgia and longing. In the middle of the cycle, the character’s emotional responses are reversed, the past now being viewed with negativity and despair, while the present is seen as exciting, joyous, and optimistic. In the final song of the cycle, the character’s growth culminates in her cautious hope for the future. The musical setting of the character’s changing opinions and feelings towards her past, present, and future will be examined from the perspectives of tonality, climax points, formal structure, melody, expression, rhythm, and accompaniment.
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    Erratic : a personal look at studio practice as research
    (Lethbridge, Alta : University of Lethbridge, Dept. of Art, 2015) Caussy, Roy; University of Lethbridge. Faculty of Fine Arts; Martin, Annie
    My thesis work is comprised of two components. The first component is my thesis exhibition, which will showcase the bulk of my research as an MFA candidate in studio art. The second component is this essay in which I will attempt to further illustrate the ideas that have steered my academic research, and informed my thesis exhibition. The purposes of this essay are the following: to explain the ideas, intentions, and goals that may not be noticeable when first viewing the projects in my thesis exhibition; a second goal is to emphasize the importance of the role of intuition and solitude in pursuing areas of interests in studio research.
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    Assume the position : play's mediation of institutional anxiety
    (Lethbridge, Alta : University of Lethbridge, Dept. of Art, 2016) Morman, Megan Mae Marie; University of Lethbridge. Faculty of Fine Arts; Gill, Don
    Assume the Position uses visual art’s flexible methodologies to consider the complex structural, affective, socioeconomic, and spatial relations between visual artists and the cultural institutions with which they are imbricated. Adopting a transdisciplinary approach that draws from visual art, cultural studies, and sociology, my practice-based research explores anxiety as a physical and temporal approach, as well as a significant relation-to-objects under neoliberalism. Materially diverse projects privilege playful approaches and new attitudes toward temporality as strategies for mediating these contemporary affects. Projects cohere by their strategic complication of vision and time, privileging the local, and emphasizing approachability by engaging humour, play, and the saturated, visual language of childhood.