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Title: Care Through Play, Anywhere: Designing Solutions For Digital Play Therapy
Date: 2022
Name: Jingyuan Li (author), Emily Carr University of Art and Design Graduate Studies (Degree granting institution), Jonathan Aitken (thesis advisor)
Name: Li, Jingyuan
Subject: Play therapy, Mental health, Therapist and patient, Pediatrics
Description: Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, many services and businesses have been transitioned online to avoid travel and exposure. A number of these timely adaptations started as a compromise, but are now expected to continue even after the pandemic is over. Telehealth and teletherapy were among the most prominent examples—as doctors, therapists, and counselors moved to deliver their services remotely. In the last week of March 2020, telehealth encounters in the United States increased by 154% compared to 2019 (Koonin et al., 2020, p. 1598). As counseling sessions were made available from home, many saw the benefits of teletherapy, including increased accessibility, timeliness, convenience, continuity of care, and patients’ comfort of being in their own space. However, unlike conversation therapies, play therapies for children rely on the act of physical play and equipment such as toys and a sand tray. As a result, play therapists have been challenged in adapting to the current model of video-based teletherapy. Based on information gathered from the primary research with counselors and play therapists, most challenges are related to the reduced therapeutic quality due to the lack of support from technology, despite the amount of interest to include more digital tools in their practice. To explore ways to solve these challenges, the researcher analyzed the data from interview sessions with the therapists and generated a list of design principles. Following these established principles, an iterative approach was initiated and included brainstorming, system mapping, wireframing, and a series of digital prototypes. Multiple possibilities of digital play therapy were explored with active participation and feedback from the professionals.
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:theses

Title: Refuge is a place, Solace is a feeling, The Unknown is the journey
Date: 2022
Name: Jordan Baraniecki (author), Emily Carr University of Art and Design Graduate Studies (Degree granting institution), Nick Conbere (thesis advisor)
Name: Baraniecki, Jordan
Subject: Drawing, Painting, Performance art, Art, Abstract, Anxiety, Sculpture
Description: Jordan Baraniecki gives an introspective look at the mind of an artist as he navigated his time during the COVID-19 pandemic and his time in Vancouver. He highlights a moment in his thesis where he dissociated from intense anxiety, which ultimately lead to his current three-dimensional ink collages and the creative projects that followed.
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:theses

Title: Generating Conversational Data: Attempts at Invading Machine Learning Systems in a World Made of Artifices
Date: 2022
Name: Guillaume Saur (author), Emily Carr University of Art and Design Graduate Studies (Degree granting institution), Ruth Beer (thesis advisor), Justin Langlois (thesis advisor)
Name: Saur, Guillaume
Subject: Machine learning, Artificial intelligence, Surveillance, New media art, Photography, Art and camouflage
Description: The instrumentalization of biometric data orchestrated through surveillance technologies can press today’s users of communication tools, devices, and platforms to opt out of such systems. This graduate research thesis aims to reveal the imperceptible forces that underwrite recognition technologies, through a series of experiments and the creation of multimedia installations that address the unethical relationship between active users and structures of control. Initiated at Emily Carr University, Vancouver, from September 2020 to May 2022, this research project hopes to uncover new possibilities for machine learning systems to propose protective devices based on image datasets composed of theatrical masks. This project explores the potential to apply generative models simultaneously as a response to facial recognition technology and as a mode of resistance to the dominance of these models. Finally, this research contributes to raising awareness toward extractive systems and surveillance technologies, while questioning the impact of artificial intelligence and its potential future outcomes.
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:theses

Title: AN EXPLORATION OF THE GRAPHIC NOVEL, THE FEMALE BODY AND TRAUMATIC MEMORY
Date: 2022
Name: Siyi An (author), Justin Novak (thesis advisor), Emily Carr University of Art and Design Graduate Studies (Degree granting institution)
Name: An, Siyi
Subject: Comic books, strips, etc., Graphic novels, Autobiographical fiction
Description: This paper discusses my research and artistic practice during the MFA program. My research is focused on how semi-autobiographical narratives in the form of graphic novels facilitate self-exploration and trauma representation. Through my art projects Tentacles and A Bouquet for You, I explore and reconnect with my female body and my Chinese culture. Together with graphic and narrative experiments conducted in comic form, I reexamine the relationship between myself as the author, my body, and my memories.
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:theses

Title: More-than-Human Design: A Mindful Intervention into Design
Date: 2022
Name: Kimia Gholami (author), Zahra Jalali (author), Garnet Hertz (thesis advisor), Maria Lantin (thesis advisor), Emily Carr University of Art and Design Graduate Studies (Degree granting institution)
Name: Gholami, Kimia, Jalali, Zahra
Subject: Design, Methodology, Ecology, Nature, Design--Environmental aspects, Interspecies encounters
Description: This research is a critical quest to develop an inclusive More-than-Human (MtH) Design Process that recognizes non-human beings as valuable participants. This approach is meant to actively acknowledge the interconnectedness and interdependence of humans and other beings and act as an intervention in different stages of the “Design Thinking” process that is based on human-centred values. Through an MtH lens, this thesis questions the short-term profit-based model in the design industry that primarily benefits humans while bringing destructive consequences to the rest of the living planet. These consequences, such as global warming, loss of biodiversity, and environmental destruction, have foregrounded the need to take the agency of non-humans more seriously in the design discipline. The MtH Design Process expands the human-centred design methodology by borrowing methods from Interaction Design (IxD) and More-than-Human Participatory Research (MtH-PR). This work has been structured in four main sections. In part 1, re-frame, we start our inquiry by looking at Interaction Design from a More-than-Human perspective. We include a series of place-based explorations in Vancouver B.C that challenged our old assumptions and biases towards different participants in design. In part 2, re-imagine, we work towards an MtH design practice by identifying its core values. These values guide several case studies that demonstrate how an MtH approach can alter existing products. Part 3, re-build, focuses on formalising the MtH design process by creating changes in different phases of the Design Thinking process. The MtH Design Process includes five steps – 1. Encounter 2. Learn 3. Plan 4. Map and 5. Build – all of which offer multiple methods, prompts, and points of inquiry into the MtH design practice. This work also includes the MtH design toolkit to support its pedagogical potential. The final part, re-connect, concludes the work by discussing the implications of MtH design and its potentials and challenges.
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:theses

Title: Curating dream experiences: studio-based journey for mental well-being
Date: 2022
Name: Yun Xiao (author), Emily Carr University of Art and Design Graduate Studies (Degree granting institution), Katherine Gillieson (thesis advisor)
Name: Xiao, Yun
Subject: Dreams, Dream interpretation, Curatorship, Art therapy, Psychotherapy
Description: In the universal sense, as nonexistent, invisible, and subconscious things, dreams have a deep connection with our reality and the self and provide great help to self-study. Everybody dreams and every dream means something, no matter how fragmentary and ridiculous it may appear (Coriat, 1915). They are the products of combinations of our experience, physical activities, mental activities and subconsciousness that we experience during the day, which are fermented in the brain during sleep. My research is a cross-disciplinary journey that takes a philosophical stance of combining arts and design, to interrogate how dreams and subconsciousness help people get close to their psychological world and serve as critical contributors to creatively knowing the self. The major research approach in my work, that of curation, extends beyond the museum field. The curatorial concept works as a mechanism for dealing with information, “sifting, sorting, hiding, and standing out” (Davis, 2016). It is used in this project for doing design works addressing dream therapy, exhibiting aesthetic works, and collecting the audience’s opinion. Curation, the activity serves for people’s mind elicits dialogue and connection between human and multiple artifacts, escapes the constraints of space and time, and conveys deeper emotions or thoughts to the audience. What’s more, curation delivers a social function. Because exhibitions, as a common outcome of curation, are needed by society and are also a good tool for spreading information. On any random day, how much of what we say, feel, and do is controlled by the unconscious mind? Based on the psychological fact that our unconscious mind plays a crucial role in shaping behaviour, defining character, managing thoughts and ultimately, determining how we live in life each waking moment, and the intimate connection between dreams and unconscious, this work explores methods for creating an environment of mental well-being for people to pay attention to their psychological world in creative ways – getting to know our dreams.
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:theses

Title: Poetic·design: Revealing the tacit aesthetic frameworks in a furniture design practice
Date: 2022
Name: Jiayu Tian (author), Sophie Gaur (thesis advisor), Louise St. Pierre (thesis advisor), Emily Carr University of Art and Design Graduate Studies (Degree granting institution)
Name: Tian, Jiayu
Subject: Aesthetics, Furniture design
Description: This research is an examination into the aesthetic values of a furniture design practice. In particular, I look at how my Chinese inheritance, my cultural and personal memory, and my assimilated tacit aesthetic values, find agency and expression through practice. I arrived at this research by being immersed in the actual processes of creative design making. Through hands-on experience and application, I found the expressions and feelings I wanted to communicate. This manifested through a series of practices which included: lighting, material explorations, handcrafting, and my personal stories via varied methods and processes of design. Moreover, I gave myself space and time, critically, for self reflection. This manner of thinking about design is derived from my personal background — I am driven by my personal journey towards becoming a more authentic version of myself as a furniture designer. I chose to do this through real discernment and detailed understanding of the aesthetics of material. Through the design of interior objects, materials that possess aesthetic agency provide me with the ability to transcribe a particular value in my work — I call this ‘the poetic’. The poetic design in my research has two aspects: 1) the respect of nature and self in everyday aesthetics and 2) design rooted in a Xiuxing, or spiritually informed and embodied making practice. It is about furniture design. It is about the home. It is about relating emotionally with the materials. It is about telling a story. It is about a journey. The character of design has been transformed into a method that assists me in building the conversation. I hope the journey that I have experienced, filtered through the lens of a poetic design method, can inspire or resonate with other designers or crafters who have similar cultural affiliations. Coming from a maker's perspective, I see the integration of utilitarianism and aesthetics, representing the ecology of self and the ecology of a maker. Moreover, I aim to break the geometric brick of utilitarian design works, breaking formalities in the process. I actively seek asperity, irregularity, and imperfections within art, craft, and design, inspired in part by Wabi Sabi, the ancient Japanese tradition of slow life. In my research, I use a series of methods to explore a way of challenging perfection, machine manufacturing, and, ultimately, enjoying the moments of engagement with the materials. Through these tactics, the objective is to build an emotional connection between self and nature and use this design practice to come closer to myself. I experience the physical pleasures in sound, feeling, and movement, and enjoy seeing the irregularities of natural forms that correspond with the human body. The living form takes on its own breath, gaining freedom from the material substances. Keywords: Poetic Design, Aesthetics, Material Practice, Furniture Design, Oriental Design, Xiuxing
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:theses

Title: Healing Through Making
Date: 2022
Name: Syeda Maleeka Zahra (author), Emily Carr University of Art and Design Graduate Studies (Degree granting institution), Sophie Gaur (thesis advisor)
Name: Zahra, Syeda Maleeka
Subject: Design, Phenomenalism, Healing, Self-care, Health
Description: My research project is a personal journey of discovery that aims to explore how communication and design can open the doors for healing and learning far beyond conventional ways. Through this intentional, often circular thinking and specific exploratory projects that make up the research, I have attempted to understand how material practice can help mitigate the effects of grief to assist in the ideas of self-care and healing. It has provided a holistic view of healing and care that recenters culture and identity integral to self-care and well-being. Lauren Vaughan states caring for unknown others is so challenging because the farther we move from the familiar, the less control we have and the more risk of failure is. Often, we find ourselves becoming lost, unknown of what it may feel like to be in touch with ourselves while we care for others in the community. There’s an under-appreciation for understanding ourselves and that reflective element that I believe is critical to being a designer who can help, listen or even create or formulate work with stakeholders in all fields. The research uses an experiential (phenomenological) approach which allows contemplation on the experience of practice to create a conceptual work for mitigating grief through material practice. The material practice finds meaning and value in the cultural capital. I use auto-ethnography because it requires the researcher or designer first to question themselves and their place in the world. Schouwengerg and Kaethler, authors of the auto-ethnographic turn in design, contrast with historical processes in ethnography and design that look outward first. This approach, however, closely tethers research with creative personal expression. They state, “forging deeply intimate objects that research and communicate personal sentiments, traumas, fears, obsessions, hopes, fascinations, passions, and more.” As we recuperate from the pandemic, it is essential to share and have conversations about how to continue engaging with the self and others. I write this thesis to serve as both a guide and an invitation for my fellow design researchers - an invitation to dedicate ourselves to facing the realities of life with care, explore how best to heal and commit to ourselves as a community by using creative healing centred design techniques to move forward.
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:theses

Title: MDes Thesis Support Document Preparation + Overview Handbook 03.01.2021
Date: 2021-03-01
Description: PDF ; MDes Thesis Support Document Preparation + Overview Handbook_03.01.2021
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:admindocs

Title: Material Language: An Approach to Acquire Literacy of the Inarticulable
Date: 2022
Name: Chiara Schmitt (author), Emily Carr University of Art and Design Graduate Studies (Degree granting institution), Keith Doyle (thesis advisor)
Name: Schmitt, Chiara
Subject: Language and communication, Industrial design, Materiality, Literacy
Description: This thesis frames analogies of language acquisition as a lens to examine materiality and explore how to make and find meaning with and through material. By means to conceptualize a so-called ‘material language,’ following a practice-led and place-based methodology, this work showcases two main case studies that investigate how we can become active agents in our relationship with the material world.
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:theses

Title: Reclamation and Decolonization: Stepping Towards a Uncertain Future
Date: 2022
Name: Patrick Wong (author), Diyan Achjadi (thesis advisor), Emily Carr University of Art and Design Graduate Studies (Degree granting institution)
Name: Wong, Patrick
Subject: Hong Kong (China), Decolonization, Reclamation of land--China--Hong Kong, Political science, Printmaking, Screen prints
Description: This thesis investigates the difficulties of reclamation and decolonization within the context of Hong Kong, recognizing the fluidity of how decolonization is defined, and the transitional nature of both people and place. Through printmaking and the metaphor of the Chinese squatting body, the artist examines how the squatting body can embody the transitional and transformational qualities of Hong Kong that express the hybridity and complexity of Hong Kong’s identity and colonial history. By combining Frantz Fanon’s definition of decolonization and Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic model, the artist argues that there is potential for political discourse within the space of Hong Kong to be resolved without enforcing a friend/enemy relationship, which often escalates towards violence, which is seen through the 2019-2020 protests. This research also shows the potential issues that may prevent the decolonization of Hong Kong due to the inherent conflict between Hong Kong’s identity as a part of the British colony, and its identity as a part of China.
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:theses

Title: Substantive Consumption: Exploring Relational Connections to Digital Musical Entanglements
Date: 2022
Name: Sam Stretch (author), Craig Badke (thesis advisor), Keith Doyle (thesis advisor), Emily Carr University of Art and Design Graduate Studies (Degree granting institution)
Name: Stretch, Sam
Subject: Music, Streaming technology (Telecommunications), Field recordings
Description: This body of work sets out to explore ways to enact relational and substantive notions of care towards the system of digital music consumption. The things we actively care for in the world are predominantly what shapes the nature of our existence within it. But when parts of the things we love the most have explicitly harmful implications on a multitude of scales, it becomes both more difficult and more important than ever to care for the entirety of something, rather than just the parts that are familiar and personally meaningful. In order to consider the full extents of music as a complex system rather than just as a thing we love, we can explore the extents of its assemblage as an entanglement of human characteristics that have become both intentionally and unintentionally embedded within it. As the world becomes more digitized, our daily interactions become more predominately cloud-based and algorithmically mediated. Our consumption of music is no exception. Within digital networks the scale of human and environmental entanglement can often feel insurmountable and ineffable, while at the same time remaining largely abstracted and hidden from our every day experience. This research will seek to quantify and begin to understand the extents of these entanglements. Music is more conveniently accessed and consumed than ever, but what have we sacrificed to attain this level of convenience, and what are some of the consequences of doing so? There is a growing need to confront the consequences of the modern methods to which it is consumed. Through primarily critical, exploratory, and reflective design methods, this work will try to re-frame some of our notions of the digital world. This re-framing will be done in an attempt to gain a greater sense of literacy, and relationality to digital infrastructure, in a hope to prepare ourselves for a world that is only growing more digitally focused.
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:theses

Title: MILES TO MIND: Proposing an augmented reality based running application for individuals prescribed running to manage symptoms of mild-moderate depression
Date: 2022
Name: Abhinav Paul (author), Emily Carr University of Art and Design Graduate Studies (Degree granting institution), Amber Frid-Jimenez (thesis advisor)
Name: Paul, Abhinav
Subject: Augmented reality, Application software, Depression, Running
Description: This thesis proposes an Augmented reality (AR) application designed to assist people experiencing mild-moderate Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). I am building on an existing solution space of distance running which has been shown to be an effective tool of managing symptoms of MDD based on multiple recent studies in the field of neuroscience and exercise science. These studies have prompted doctors to prescribe exercise treatment plans to mitigate symptoms. However, MDD often makes it difficult for people to continue these routines due to symptoms of fatigue associated with MDD. My proposed application design aims to address the challenging obstacles that people face after they begin their exercise treatment plans, specifically running. During my recovery from moderate MDD, I understood that running just for the sake of running was another barrier that I had to overcome. Based on some methods I used to keep myself continue a run like chasing an imaginary animal or setting a small mental objective of 10–20 m, I realized that the activity of running could be made more engaging and be based on a purpose other than covering a certain distance, with the help of mixed reality mediums such as Augmented Reality (AR). This thesis lies within a speculative framework assuming by the end of the decade, mixed reality interaction is simplified enough for eyewear without requiring bulky headsets. Through the proposition of an Augmented Reality (AR) based running application, I explore the idea of using AR to (1) use running as a play centered activity to chase using visual cues, instead of a competitive activity to cover a certain amount of distance, and (2) explore the role of companionship during the run in the form of a virtual companion. The proposed model could be described as an overlap between an AR based game called Pokémon GO and existing running services like Strava.
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:theses

Title: Shelter in Paint: a portrait of an empty house
Date: 2022
Name: Lacey Jane Wilburn (author), Cameron Cartiere (thesis advisor), Emily Carr University of Art and Design Graduate Studies (Degree granting institution)
Name: Wilburn, Lacey Jane
Subject: Painting, Interior architecture, Dwellings, Portraits, Figurative painting
Description: "Shelter in Paint: a portrait of an empty house" is an investigation into private space and private thought through the visual language of representational painting. Structured as though moving through the rooms of the house, this paper discusses different thematics of domestic space in response to a painting created throughout the course of this degree. It considers the entrance for the concept of interiority, the foundation as the history of interior art, vacant corners as spaces for daydreaming, domestic objects as portraits of the inhabitant, the neighbourhood in relation to public space, the kitchen as the domestic core, the bedroom for intimacy, and the attic for secrets and privacy. These parallels between psychological space and physical space attempt to answer research questions related to the emotional power of interior space, the rift between public and private life, and the ability of interior space to reveal to the inhabitant.
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:theses

Title: A New Resourcefulness
Date: 2022
Name: Christa Clay (author), Emily Carr University of Art and Design Graduate Studies (Degree granting institution), Keith Doyle (thesis advisor)
Name: Clay, Christa
Subject: Circular economy, Sustainability, Sustainable design, Design
Description: This thesis reflects on our relationships to the materials and objects that we are surrounded with, the agency they carry, as well as the responsibility we have to the places and communities we inhabit. This context makes way for a narrative on localization, circularity, and resiliency. A New Resourcefulness offers auto-ethnography woven throughout theory and design practice, as experienced in British Columbia, Canada. Includes the essay: Ecological Restoration through Material Practice: Invasive Species as Resource, by Christa Clay and Chiara Schmitt (pp. 88 - 98).
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:theses

Title: Being an Important Artist: Creative Production and Artistic Branding on Social Media
Date: 2022
Name: Matty Flader (author), Emily Carr University of Art and Design Graduate Studies (Degree granting institution), Alla Gadassik (thesis advisor)
Name: Flader, Matty
Subject: TikTok (Electronic resource), Social media, Labor, Identity, Artists, Celebrities
Description: The arts-based research in this thesis explores the status of creative labour and artistic identity on social media through the creation of branded Tik Tok accounts and multi-platform media content. The thesis addresses the platformization of artistic production on social media and investigates the ambivalent relationship between self-fashioned creative identity and corporate branding strategy, both within and without the arts academy. The project is composed of films created to highlight the labour of social media practice within a competitive attention economy that positions the artist as performer and product of consumption. Some of the interventions involve characters who aspire to become famous (e.g. @garbahje), some directly reference well-known celebrities (e.g. @celebritydeepfake), and others create self-referential collaborations with local influencers that highlight the labour behind online branding (e.g. The Real Alex Kazemi and @puppyteethstudios). These projects are situated within lineages of post-internet aesthetics and camp, developed to create an ambiguous tone that reveals the complexity of presenting or performing artistic authenticity within a neoliberal platform economy.
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:theses