Oh wait, is this a loop?

When Photography as a medium arrived, it changed our world. It caused us to reinvent many things, one of them being the medium of painting. All of a sudden, a realistically painted picture was no longer the best possible way to document and archive visual qualities. New styles of painting evolved, and the medium grew into something bigger than before. The web arrived more than three decades ago. What mediums has radically changed since then? Or more important, what mediums should we reinvent because of the web? This book is an systematic attempt to investigate that question. What I knew before starting my thesis was the input into a system. The conclusion (page 166) is the output. You can skip to the output if you want to cut corners, but as with all systems, it becomes far more interesting if you understand its construction

A Little Miss

All of us face moments in our lives when our perspective of the world changes. One of the most drastic ways to experience this change is through the death of someone you have known and loved for your whole life. On September 6, 2014, I experienced that change when my little sister Emily passed away suddenly. Ever since that day, I have been trying to restructure my life so that I can function and contribute to society. My thesis is about this struggle. Through 80 poems that I have written, my creative thesis tells the story of my grief. I am not demonstrating how to grieve, though I am demonstrating how varied and uneven and unending the process is. Using psychoanalytic theory, I ask myself whether or not I am grieving correctly. Inspired by literature in which form communicates as keenly as content, I have created a looping structure in which the reader of my work can choose, after each poem they read, up to three options to continue on with. This structure might suggest an element of free will in the grieving process, but in reality the choice is an illusion because the options are limited and follow disorienting, unpredictable paths.One consequence of this looping structure is the reader’s inevitable re-encountering, therefore the repetition, of some poems. My intention is to practice insistence, a method of writing that Gertrude Stein pursued to change the meaning of a word or phrase (or in my thesis, a poem) by repeating it until the reader saw past traditional or clichéd meanings. This insistence helps generate multiple layers within my work as a whole, and reflects my pursuit of expressing my relationship with Emily and my grief over her death as unique, but still accessible to readers. With my personal grieving experience comes constant ruminating, and with each reader’s different choices, they experience different objects of obsession, with changing views of a single poem every time they return to it after venturing further into some of the others. My hope for this thesis is to show how isolating and overwhelming grief can be, its non-linear, recursive nature, and how varied each individual experience is. Although Emily was little in size, the effect both her life and death have had on me is reflected in the complicated looping structure and emotional content of my thesis, A Little Miss. I dedicate my thesis and all of the time and research that has gone into it, to my little sister Emily Bernauer

My Sister\u27s Tears

One of the most influential writers I studied in the Advanced Creative Writing cluster was Amiri Baraka. His style of writing distinguishes him from his peers. but the journey he took to get the caliber of writing he\u27s at now excites me as a writer. From the Beat Period (1957-1962). The Transitional Period ( 1963-1965). The Black Nationalist Period (1965-1974). to the Third World Marxist Period (1974- ) (Beat Reader) Each period signified growth in his writing. but his way of thinking changed. He grew as a person. His transitions as a writer forced me to examine my own. My writing has grown from this journalistic style which included hard news and feature to leisurely writing poetry to short fiction. Although a short journey. it is a journey nonetheless. From my foundation as a fact finding, inverted pyramid structured style to more creative imaginative pieces. From a writing standpoint. it\u27s quite a change. My Sister\u27s Tears, the novella presented as my culminating project, is a short fiction piece. My goal was to create a fiction piece that presented characters and scenarios that were realistic. It was important to me that the react ions of the characters were sincere. The plot contains situations that tie characters together with background information on how those relationships were formed. Chloe and Toni are primary characters in this story. The dynamic between them is that of two sisters. one who has a successful career but a failed relationship. The other has a failed career bur a fulfilling relationship. Both want what the other has, but only one is willing to sabotage a friendship to get it. The story is told mainly through two characters. One of which is Toni, but the most important characters is the voice of the grandmother. She is the voice of reason for Toni. She was an advisor in life and her lessons prove true in her death. Her lessons are always timely from her appearance in Toni\u27s dreams to childhood lessons of wounds healing over time that can be applied lo adult situations. The grandmother was an intricate part of pushing the story forward in time. The use of the grandmother helped to create scenes for the reader. Her voice also aided in ending the story which was one of the most difficult portions of the story to complete. Completing this piece was one of my greatest challenges. I hope that readers feel satisfied once they\u27ve completed it. I hope they feel that each character\u27s scenario has closure. but I hope readers are surprised at the outcome. I didn\u27t want the story to be predictable. I wanted there to be surprises that the reader had no idea were coming

How do professionals, parents/carers and children view the role of the learning mentor in a multi-agency setting?

"This project will enable the learning mentor team to establish what links have been made with outside agencies and how professionals view the role of the learning mentor. There is little research locally into this area and it is hoped important learning can be fed back to policymakers and strategists within the local authority." - Page 5

Principles for Starting a Song-Writing Ministry

With the approval of Dr. Keith Currie and Dr. David Schmal, I have chosen to complete the Music & Worship Ministry Project as the Final Thesis for the Masters of Art in Music and Worship. The objective of the project is to produce an Extended Play Record (EP) that contains five original worship songs written specifically for this EP. The components of this project include: songwriting, arranging, performing, recording, and producing. This project will achieve two purposes: first, the songs in this EP are meant to be sung in my local church – Koinonia Evangelical Church (KEC); second, this project is the medium through which I complete my research on building a songwriting ministry in KEC. It answers the question: what are some foundational philosophies to starting a local church songwriting ministry? By working through the different stages of producing this record, I was able to identify seven guiding principles on which KEC will build its songwriting ministry. 1. Words Over Music 2. Songs for the Congregation, Not the Performer 3. Feedback is Our Friend 4. Pursue Excellence, Not Perfection 5. A One-Man Band Can Never Grow Bigger Than One Man 6. Inner Worship to Outer Worship 7. Singing is Not the Goal, Discipleship is the Goa

I forgive you but it is my Christian duty to punish you

This is a collection of stories about Kenyan characters that are the public face of homegrown success. They are obedient children and responsible working adults. For many of these characters it becomes clear that there is a big gap between voiced facts about their lives and the unspoken truths about what they are. Rumors, gossip, letter writing and private prayer undermine this public face. During Daniel Arap Moi's Presidency between 1978 and 2002, Kenyan children were taught in school that Moi was the generous Baba wa Taifa or father of the Nation who supplied them with free school milk. He was the number one farmer, teacher, headmaster and chancellor of all universities in Kenya. This is where the characters in this story collection live

Disability is Beautiful, Disability is my Culture

The stories of advocates in the disability rights movement remain largely undocumented, especially in the area of the arts. This research uses ethnographic fieldwork to document such stories in the interviewee's own words. The resulting portrait of disability, advocacy, and the arts also details the story of interviewee and interviewer, and of the fieldworking process as a whole. This thesis focuses on the life history and life story of musician Jim Whalen and his contributions to the disability rights and arts movement. The fieldstudy explores the stories, creations, beliefs, motives, feelings, philosophies, thoughts, and life histories, of not only Whalen but also of the researcher and others intersecting with Whalen's life and work, including writer Steve Kuusisto. An ethnographic methodology, including both in-depth interviews and participant observation, comprise the research design. The researcher uses the interdisciplinary-research tools of fieldwork in order to document and represent his findings. In this study, advocacy and art are understood as vehicles to reframe current notions about disability. In addition to insight into the disability rights movement at this point in time, the stories included provide an arsenal of techniques, concepts, and tools to help disability advocates understand, reframe, and renegotiate life experiences, in particular through art. In conjunction with reframing ideas such as "This is normal for me" and renegotiating experiences such as "Always stops right now," other advocacy tools discovered include "Summoning the dragon," "Not if, but how," and "Everyone has a why." The final product is part word portrait, part life history, part snapshot, part auto-ethnography, part biography, part oral history, part cultural history, part narrative, part ethnography --it is both an explanation and an ode to the two central themes from which the title is born: "Disability is my culture" and "Disability is beautiful.

The Story of Indigenous Spirit Printmaking and the Living Rock Spirit: Yǝ́dı́ı Kwǝ

This (re)search is aimed at finding out how Dene Yǝ́dı́ı; a concept translated in English as “living beings” could be considered within my artistic practice of printmaking. Dene Yǝ́dı́ı acknowledges objects as alive with spirits of their own. As an urban Sahtu Dene artist I shadow the stories and teachings of Sahtúgot’ı̨nę spirituality that have been carried forward through the lived experiences of Denendah Elders and leaders such as George Blondin, Tatti Fibbie, and Johnny Neyelle, who tell these stories for new generations of Dene to take hold of. I explore my relationships to non-human Yǝ́dı́ı that are interwoven within my spiritual/artistic practice of stone-printing (Lithography) and the ways of Indigenous Spirit Printmaking, and how they expand ideas of reciprocity, ceremony, and realities of urban Indigeneity. Through this process I use methods of creative narrative writing and storying to tell these ideas of relationality, rather than coercing to western and institutional research thesis frameworks that still need decolonizing. For my thesis, I tell the story of my deep connection and relationship to Kwǝ [rock], our journey towards the creation of prints that express my lived experiences through adoption, connections to Indigenous Dene spirit, connections to land, and honouring embodied realities for urban Sahtu Dene in the Edırı Nę́nę́ [now world]

The Somewhat Less than Super Adventures of The Gargoyle and The Sparrow, Including the Pseudo-comical Incident of the Fan Fiction and What Transpired After

What do superheroes do when they retire? Are they expected to go out and reinvent themselves, maybe write a heartwarming memoir--or worse, sit in silence for the rest of their days as if it never happened? Two out of three of those wouldn\u27t make for very interesting theatre, so I went with Option 1. Frank and Eddie (formerly known as masked avengers The Gargoyle and The Sparrow) haven\u27t seen much of each other since leaving the trade, so when Eddie visits his old comrade out of the blue after fifteen years, it\u27s odd enough. When he pulls out a scheme to get back into the spotlight that involves them emulating superfan Katharine\u27s G/S fan fiction and posing as a married couple, the duo can only be bound for stranger tides. My play is a farce exploring camraderie, the reasons we mask ourselves, the motivations behind fan fiction, and a what-if scenario different enough from Birdman that I felt comfortable writing it to completion