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Title: Nature and Service of Care
Date: 2020
Name: Srushti Kulkarni (author), Eugenia Bertulis (thesis advisor), Emily Carr University of Art and Design Graduate Studies (Degree granting institution)
Name: Kulkarni, Srushti
Subject: Older people--Care, Long-term care facilities, Nursing homes, Social isolation, Nature, Community
Description: An ageing population leads to challenges in long-term care homes such as social isolation in multi-cultural communities. While working in Mumbai, India, I observed this social isolation of seniors in long-term care homes first-hand. Familial and financial limitations are insufficient in providing seniors shelters in their own homes, leading to greater demand for ‘nursing homes’ in India. The seniors in care homes with smaller populations were more likely to quickly find relationships among their neighbours. In larger-scale care homes hosting more than 100 seniors, the feeling of institutions, unfamiliarity kept the seniors socially disconnected, in Mumbai as well as the care homes I visited in Vancouver, BC. The policies about eldercare are not updated, leading to insufficient resources and outdated norms. As part of my MDes research, I also visited De Hogeweyk (a dementia village) in the Netherlands. I used methods like observational research, fly on the wall, and interviews with the management members. As a designer, I explored and made iterative design objects and experiences for human-human and human-nature connections. This thesis describes design research activities and prototypes such as guided outdoor walking and reflection practices, using peer designers as proxy participants. I describe my service design workshops and architectural space and layout discussions. This thesis work includes historical perspectives and personal reflection on nature-human connections such as described in the Bhagavad Gita and practiced in traditional Ikebana. One significant insight through the research was that experiencing time in nature might solve institutional issues, whether in India, Vancouver, or the Netherlands. The second important lesson learned as a designer, addresses how time pressure makes people take shortcuts, such as overlooking the importance of material in concept review and testing and too little or too much preparation in developing interview scripts and protocols. The research also reflects on iterations of different design concepts, repeating and improving, recognizing the failures and appreciating them. It is an essential step as a designer to learn from the process, especially when it is imperfect. Lastly, through this research, I found that nature, space, memory and social connection are interconnected, intricately woven together to help humans survive independently and with fellowship.
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:theses

Title: Expectations in Material Culture & Re-thinking our Separation of Space
Date: 2018
Name: Avery Shaw (author), Emily Carr University of Art and Design Graduate Studies (Degree granting institution), Hélène Day Fraser (thesis advisor)
Name: Shaw, Avery
Subject: Nature, Home, Perception, Aesthetics, Material culture, Sustainability, Value
Description: There is a pressing need to shift present expectations of urban lifestyle in contemporary western society — to reconsider how we can sustain ourselves and our planet. Shifting understanding of our relationship to our built environment may play a role in adjusting expectations of the future. In doing so, we can start to look towards alternate ideas and new possibilities for the material culture found within the home. This thesis seeks to expose how we see and organize our homes through aesthetics, language and meaning. It considers how this affects our perception of our built and natural environments — our separation of space — in a social sense. A generative process-led design practice is used to find means, through artifact, to have others (first the designer, and in turn, users/consumers) think critically about current understandings of urban lifestyle, and aspirations connected to desired standards of living. A series of small projects that explore themes of care, control and expectations are used as a catalyst for discussion. The intent is not to find solutions for sustainable design but rather to communicate and promote consideration about sustainability, the home environment, and material culture.
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:mdes, info:fedora/ecuad:theses

Title: Fixing Femininity
Date: 2020
Name: Kat Grabowski (Author)
Name: Grabowski, Kat
Subject: Nature, Photography, Identity (Philosophical concept), Ideology, Religion, Feminism, Femininity
Description: Informed by my personal experience with organized religion and conditioned ideologies, my photo-based practice aims to explore my position as a female photographer who contributes to the commodification and consumption of women’s images while also undermining and complicating standard and stereotypical versions of female narrative. In this paper, I unpack the impact of my personal history with Evangelicalism, the importance of nature as a reoccurring motif in my images, the role of the camera and photographic exploration, and the trajectory of my practice as established by my thesis photo series titled "Finding The Pieces".
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:theses

Title: Sea Inside
Date: 2012
Name: Marten Sims (author), Emily Carr University of Art and Design Graduate Studies (Degree granting institution)
Name: Sims, Marten
Subject: Interdisciplinary, Marine ecology, Ocean, Nature, Design, Holism
Description: The emerging practice of transformation services employs design skills in non-traditional territories and brings together a diversity of intelligences, communication types and frameworks from which to define a problem and develop real-world solutions. Sea Inside is a contribution to the growing discourse around the transformations taking place at the intersection of design, culture and marine ecology. The thesis paper describes the importance of exercising a holistic approach to solving complex problems such as the current crisis threatening our planet’s ocean (and by extension, ourselves). This technique has emerged and developed from my practice of designing a small-scale temporary environment – in the form of a pilot exhibition, interactive features and creative workshops – that attempt to focus participant’s actions and dialogues on the relationship we have with the sea around, and inside us. The project intends to transform people’s perspectives, maintain current positive association and/or provide critical reflection and reflexive opportunities to engage with the subject matter of the ocean. It is hoped that this evolution of the intersections between multiple creative disciplines will support the continued transformation of the participants and encourage actions towards designing and implementing more sustainable ways of living with the ocean in the future.
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:mdes, info:fedora/ecuad:theses

Title: Intricate Webs of Nature From the Microscopic to the Cosmic
Date: 2019
Name: Emelina Soares (Author)
Name: Soares, Emelina
Subject: Nature, Patterns, Installations (Art), Mycology, Cosmology, Biomimicry
Description: The thesis paper explores an interdisciplinary and research based practice as a means to interpret the intricacies of webbed patterns in the universe. It examines the existence of patterns at a microscopic and macroscopic level in order to reinterpret them in a contemporary art context. The practice draws on theories from philosophers, mycologists, ecologists, and physicists such as Michel Foucault, Suzanne Simard, Lisa Randall, Bernie Krause and Carl Sagan. Through an investigation of their ideas, the paper highlights the presence of these patterns in nature and as an artistic influence. The structure of webbed patterns in fungi, the human body, land, roots, the cosmos, and animal architecture are a continuation of the artistic investment in biological patterns, large and small. The thesis artworks discussed here will emphasize how a research based practice is intertwined with material, form and process through a series of installations. This interdisciplinary and process based research practice builds an awareness of the pervasive patterns in the universe.
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:theses

Title: Honouring Ghosts & The Nature of Grief: Artmaking as Transfiguration
Date: 2020
Name: Amberlie Perkin (Author)
Name: Perkin, Amberlie
Subject: Sculpture, Phenomenology and art, Grief, Walking, Nature, Ecology
Description: This thesis project is rooted in relationships─ the deep bonds which we share with one another, with our more-than-human kin, and our relationship with the abundant animate life that exists in the natural world. After losing several loved ones to cancer in a short time I became drawn to the interplay of grief and wounded ecology. This led to a methodological framework for making which involves thinking with grief and thinking with and through nature. Through curious and embodied engagement with the natural world, my aim is to create a material vernacular for grief using the formal and metaphoric language of nature. The questions I am researching through my thesis work are: How is the transformational nature of grief enacted through the intuitive, embodied, material, and metaphoric processes of making? How can the absence created by death be materially and conceptually made present through space and form? The research takes a phenomenological approach through walking, observing, sensing, and collecting organic ephemera in the natural environment. This sensorial experience includes an openness to the spectral─ making space to listen and commune with ghosts while in nature and in the studio. My embodied experiences in the natural world and the organic matter I’ve collected are then translated through various material investigations in the studio including relief printing, repetitive layering to build up forms, generating 3D sculptures, and finally, creating large scale immersive installations. This thesis has elucidated how death can be a type of refugia in both life and artmaking ─ allowing us to draw from the compost of loss and chaos to re-order and reanimate them through altered forms. The final artworks have been propelled by asking: What material processes enact regeneration─ extracting a quality from the debris of our losses to make new with? The thesis project explores what it looks like to actively grieve, to go on living with death. It enacts the hopeful potentiality in the simultaneous work of mourning while making new.
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:theses

Title: Lost & Found Stories: Exploring Ecological Storytelling
Date: 2018
Name: Roy Jeong Kak Kim (author), Emily Carr University of Art and Design Graduate Studies (Degree granting institution), Haig Armen (thesis advisor)
Name: Kim, Roy Jeong Kak
Subject: Memory, Nature, Storytelling, Sustainability
Description: It is widely acknowledged that environmental issues are complicated – that the means we use to try and address them are knotted affairs made up of many, many complicated threads. Too often the response to this tangle is avoidance and denial. Arguably, unsustainable human behaviour patterns are a significant barrier to addressing environmental concerns. This thesis details a design research approach considers approaches for behaviour change through interaction design and personal storytelling. The aim throughout has been to uncover new opportunities that could potentially provoke: environmental awareness, motivation towards changed behaviours, citizen agency. Environmental researchers are continuously analysing and describing environmental problems. Dissemination of this information is often seen as the main means to not only prove and demonstrate the issues but also to provide evidence that might change our current unsustainable living patterns. Social Media, documentaries, and news reporting provide a plethora of images, scientific facts and statistics about the issues. These unfortunately are not always effective – rather than motivating people to act - they often provoke responses such as fear, shame and consequent inaction. Acknowledging that objective, rational evidence does not necessarily impact human behavior, this body of work looks to narrative and interactive approaches as a means to invite people to consider environmental problems on a more personalized level. A key goal of my work has been to create means for enhancing and appreciating people’s experiences with nature - to provide outlets for people to share and reconsider their relations with the environment. By engaging people with their own personal stories or memories related to nature, I have sought to explore means to merge people’s collective memory of nature. Digital strategies that are commonly used in digital marketing campaigns aimed towards consumer agendas have been co-opted and revamped for an alternate purpose; to provide means for people to consider and respond with more motivation towards care for the environment. To that end, an open-ended, generative citizen design research tool intended to widen the perception of the use of interactive platforms for pro-environmental research practices was developed.
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:mdes, info:fedora/ecuad:theses

Title: Imagining the Ecosphere: A Material Exploration into the Fantastical Possibilities of Life
Date: 2020
Name: Emma Baldwin (author), Diyan Achjadi (thesis advisor), Emily Carr University of Art and Design Graduate Studies (Degree granting institution)
Name: Baldwin, Emma
Subject: Painting, Installations (Art), Nature, Human-animal relationships
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:theses

Title: Nature Speaking Podcasts
Date: 2020
Subject: Interviews, COVID-19 (Disease), Nature, Sound
Description: Student podcasts created for CCID202 + CCID302 + HUMN205: Nature Speaking, with instructor Sarah Van Borek.
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:studentresearch

Title: Conversation Collaboration
Date: 2020
Name: Cabading, Chloe (Host), Madsen, Keira (Host), Snaden, Tess (Host), Lu, Zoe (Host)
Subject: COVID-19 (Disease), Artistic collaboration, Sound, Interviews, Nature
Description: This podcast is a conversation centred around the effects of COVID-19, experiences in nature and exploring our relationships to sound. Each group member conducted interviews with the public and brought what they had gathered to the table in the discussion that we present for you today. We hope you enjoy and keep talking to one another!
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:naturespeaking

Title: Nature Speaking Episode 1 Mixdown
Date: 2020
Name: Barrios, Yessica (Creator)
Subject: Nature, Urban animals, Rats, COVID-19 (Disease)
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:naturespeaking

Title: How Nature Has Spoken to You (English version)
Date: 2020
Name: Zhang, Tingyi (Host), Ross, Amber (Host), Qi, Ji (Host), Lucey, Erin (Host)
Subject: COVID-19 (Disease), Interviews, Nature
Description: In this episode of Nature Speaking, Losfo, Amber, Ji, and Erin interviewed their friends and family about the changes they had noticed in nature since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. *This is a companion podcast to 'How Nature has Spoken to You (Chinese Version). Both podcasts discuss the same interview material, however the content in each podcast may be different*
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:naturespeaking

Title: Nature Speaking: What Do You Hear?
Date: 2020
Name: Ross, Amber (Host), Barrios, Yessica (Host)
Subject: Nature sounds, Nature, Sounds, Walking
Description: This week the students of Nature Speaking were tasked with going for a soundwalk and recording the sounds they heard. Amber and Yessica discuss further their experiences and what they found along the way.
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:naturespeaking

Title: Let Nature Speak to You
Date: 2020
Name: XU, Marisa (Host), Leshgold, Harry (Host)
Subject: Walking, Sound, Nature, Nature sounds
Description: PLEASE NOTE: The email to send your contributions to is [email protected], I said [email protected] by accident (harry).
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:naturespeaking

Title: COVID-19 and the Climate Crisis
Date: 2020
Name: Snaden, Tess (Host)
Subject: Global warming, COVID-19 (Disease), Sustainability, Nature
Description: This podcast will touch on stories of nature’s resurrection through COVID-19 and explore why our response as a population has been so different from that of our response to global warming.
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:naturespeaking

Title: How Nature Has Spoken to You (Chinese Version)
Date: 2020
Name: Zhang, Tingyi (Host), Qi, Ji (Host), Wen, Christie (Host)
Subject: Interviews, COVID-19 (Disease), Nature
Description: In this episode of Nature Speaking, Losfo, Amber, Ji, and Erin interviewed their friends and family about the changes they had noticed in nature since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. *This is a companion podcast to 'How Nature has Spoken to You (English Version). Both podcasts discuss the same interview material, however the content in each podcast may be different*
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:naturespeaking

Title: A Conversation in Lockdown
Date: 2020
Name: Shayla (Host), Yessica (Host), Grace (Host), Marisa (Host)
Subject: Interviews, Nature, COVID-19 (Disease), Sound, Isolation
Description: This is the final collaborative track by Shayla, Yessica, Grace and Marisa. A collaborative podcast where we talk about the difference of sound before and during the lockdown, includes some funny/interesting stories :)!
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:naturespeaking

Title: Wildlife Rehabilitation During COVID-19
Date: 2020
Name: Lucey, Erin (Host), Cutting, Sarah (Artist)
Subject: Animals, Wildlife rescue, Nature, COVID-19 (Disease)
Description: With more people exploring nature and spending time at home, wildlife is being given more second chances.
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:naturespeaking

Title: Environmental Matrix
Date: 2020
Name: Wu, Fan (Host), Morgan, Mickey (Host), Kim, Jocelyn (Host), Leshgold, Harry (Musician)
Subject: Nature, COVID-19 (Disease), Sound, Interviews, Ambient sounds
Description: This episode is hosted by Fan Wu, Mickey Morgan, Jocelyn Kim, and Harry Leshgold. Each of us recorded an interview with friends to discuss and better understand how we each interpret and engage with the natural world around us.
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:naturespeaking

Title: Finding Noise Pollution in our Surroundings
Date: 2020
Name: Qi, Ji (Host), Kim, Jocelyn (Host)
Subject: Walking, Sound, Nature, Noise pollution
Description: A collaborative piece put together by Ji Qi and Jocelyn Kim, conversing about the soundwalks we recorded and noise pollution around us.
Collection: info:fedora/ecuad:naturespeaking