Information in formation: Cognition inspired objects and furniture

For this thesis, I intend to identify subject matters that reflect my interpretation of modern, relevant accounts about the world. Through research into the chosen subjects, I will gather related data and observations. This information will be processed to formulate relationships and narrative. Such graphic displays of information for these stories will be my inspiration. My interpretations will be further realized visually through my design process. Archetypes of the proposed furniture or object will be chosen based on the potential relationship between them and the chosen narrative topic. Visual abstractions and patterns will emerge from inspiration derived from the topographical depictions or visualized data. The outcome will be a body of work that includes functional objects that depict a deeper context communicating topical narratives and connections through multi-dimensional data visualization. My goal, for the resulting pieces, is to stimulate mindful serviceability as the user engages with a utilitarian object. Thematic cartographies document information and reflect our perceptions of the world we inhabit. Furniture and objects can be embedded with narrative and become tools of such communication. In addition to utility and narrative, furniture also speaks about the identity of the person who chooses to buy and live with it. Similar to fashion choices in clothing or accessories, furniture can express our social status, worldly viewpoints and individual or group ideologies. Furniture and household items can serve a conventional function and simultaneously impart added context to it\u27s intended utility, interaction or activity. This supplementary context elevates our connections with the object, the world and those around us. Human beings have recorded stories, relayed instruction, and transferred knowledge since our primitive beginnings. Images and language have chronicled information, history and legend. Initially, graphic visualization was presented as geometric diagrams to record such things as the positioning of stars for navigation or maps documenting early exploration. In previous centuries, documenting the exploration of the world was the prominent cartographic topic-du-jour. I believe the current, post-industrial revolutionary counterpart is the story about our utilization and consumption of this very same world. With my furniture pieces, I hope to bring these realizations into our daily consciousness through functional objects that panegyrize the natural resources we utilize. By incorporating geographic formations and research data into dimensional forms, I hope to spark a consciousness about our relationship and interactions with the planet and it\u27s other inhabitants. Using handmade objects as a universal form of communication, I intend to expose unseen narratives while challenging the ways in which we understand the world around us

Structured Songwriting in Special Education Group Music Therapy from a Humanistic Lens: Development of a Method

This capstone thesis project explored a method of structured group songwriting through a humanistic approach. While there was compelling research of songwriting with various populations in music therapy there was noticeably less documentation of work with developmental disability and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) populations (Baker, Wigram, Stott, McFerrin 2008). There was also limited research available on specific songwriting process elements and the theoretical framework behind such music therapy interventions (Stewart, 2016). More data on this topic would be beneficial to music therapists, particularly young professionals, who frequently use songwriting as an intervention with this population. Based on research and experiences, I adapted a songwriting intervention and facilitated it over three consecutive sessions. The intervention was facilitated with a group of four pre-adolescent boys with varying impairments in a special education setting. Through implementation, observation and review of lyrical content, I found that songwriting structure and musical material must be provided based on client abilities and needs. This adapted songwriting method can be examined by its structure, for instance using a repetitive Chorus/Verse form, while using flexible refining limits such as directive questions. This project provides an example of an adapted songwriting method used in a group music therapy session and additional support for the continued use of songwriting with students with special needs

Confined Comfort

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College

Reparative Description, Indigenous Partners, and the SNAC Edit-a-thon

Thank you to our edit-a-thon participants without whom we would not have had an event. We also thank our Indigenous advisory board: Marge Bruchac, Stephen Curley, Taylor Gibson, Eric Hemenway, Keahiahi Long, and Melissa Stoner. And a shout out to the SNAC editors who served as reviewers for the edit-a-thon, including Jodi Berkowitz, Betts Coup, John Dunning, Kit Messick, Becca Morgan, and Sarah Rigdon.The Social Networks and Archival Context—a.k.a. SNAC—is a free, online resource that helps users discover biographical and historical information about individuals, families, and organizations that created or are documented in primary sources and to see their connections to one another. Users can find archival materials from cultural heritage institutions around the world. In ongoing efforts to increase diverse representation of entities in SNAC and to ensure that records related to Indigenous and Native communities are described in ways that reflect and respect them, SNAC hosted an “edit-a-thon” on October 11–12, 2021. This event, held during Indigenous People’s Day, extended the work of SNAC’s 2020 edit-a-thon centering Indigenous records and consciously included a greater Indigenous presence by having an Indigenous advisory board, targeting outreach to Indigenous participants, and developing an Indigenous editorial guide. The event resulted in important cultural protocols and workflows, a new Editorial Guide for Indigenous Descriptions in SNAC, and better representation for over 50 SNAC records

Aleš Hrdlička: A New Finding Aid and an Exhibit Appearance for a Controversial Figure in the History of Anthropology

Aleš Hrdlička was an anthropologist who left a complicated legacy. His work in physical anthropology was groundbreaking, but his history is fraught with accusations of misogyny and a belief that his work contributed to major racist ideologies of the 20th century. His papers are open for research at the National Anthropological Archives and the finding aid for those papers, the original creation of which was funded by the Repatriation Office, Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), is now available digitally on SOVA through recent funding from the FY2019 Collections Information (CIS) pool. Some of Hrdlička’s work is on display in the new exhibition, Documenting Diversity: How Anthropologists Record Human Lif

Sydel Silverman: A New Virtual Finding Aid for a Scholar Committed to Anthropology’s Legacy

Last March, a giant in the field of anthropology passed away. Sydel Silverman (1933-2019) was a scholar of Italian and other (as she called them) “complex” societies, as well as the history of anthropology. Silverman advocated for anthropology throughout her career. At the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center in the 1970s, Silverman argued that anthropology was an “essential” discipline, convincing Margaret Mead to join her fight. Silverman’s perhaps most influential contribution to the field was her leadership of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, anthropology’s most prominent funding organization, where she served as President from 1987 to 1999. Through Wenner-Gren, Silverman built anthropology’s intellectual community and reach. Silverman was also a major proponent of preserving anthropology’s legacy through archival records. She helped to found the Council for the Preservation of Anthropological Records (CoPAR), which published works on the topic and created a registry of anthropologists’ archival papers. This month, the NAA published a digital, keyword searchable (‘encoded’, in archives-speak) finding aid (created by Katherine Christensen) to Silverman’s collections

Structure of an anti-Aldol Addition Product of Benzaldehyde and a Pseudoephedrine-Derived O-Silyl Ketene N,O-Acetal

[4S-(4R*,5R*,8R*,9S*)]-2,2,5,6,8-Penta- methyl-4,9-diphenyl- 1,3-dioxa-6-aza-2-silacyclono-nan-7-one, CE2H29NO3Si, Mr = 383.56, monoclinic, P21, a = 6.550 (3), b = 17.318 (6), c = 20.129 (6) A, /3=98.83(3)° , V =2256.2(14) A 3, Z=4, Dx= 1.13 gcm -3, A(Mo Ka) = 0.71073 A,/z = 1.18 cm -1, F(000) = 824, room temperature, R on F = 0.039 for 4305 reflections with Fo 2 > 3cr(Fo2). The two independent molecules in this structure have nearly the same configuration and geometry. The Si atoms are tetrahedrally coordinated, with average Si--C bond distances of 1.842(3)/~ and average Si---O bond distances of 1.636 (7)A; angles at Si differ from 109.5 ° by an average of 3.5 °. The nine-membered rings are fully extended and the planes of the phenyl groups are approximately perpendicular to the nine- membered ring.Chemistry and Chemical Biolog

An exhibition of ceiling-hung banners

"When it became necessary in a course dealing with motion in art to create a piece of work using kinetic force, I turned to natural wind currents because of my complete lack of interest in machines. This choice plus an interest in fabrics and sewing, developed over a number of years, led quite naturally to a concern with banners of fabric and design highly sensitive to changes in wind current. My first banners were of bold, simple designs executed entirely of cotton fabric in an appliqué method. They were usually three and four foot rectangles suspended on a rod and hung from the ceiling. A swivel allowed the entire banner to turn in response to air currents while the fabric was free to swing or flutter in the breeze

Access Policies for Native American Archival Materials in the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution

This case study contributes to the history of collections access protocols by examining one repository’s policies and practices over a fifty-year period— those of the National Anthropological Archives at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. It describes a series of archival programs and projects that occurred before, during, and after the development of the Protocols for Native American Archival Materials in order to view changes in the archives’ access policies within a broader cultural and institutional milieu, presenting a more complex narrative than previously available. The case study assesses the influence of the Protocols as well as some challenges to the adoption of several recommendations. Finally, we make several proposals for archival repositories with comparable collections and constituencies

The Automaticity of Semantic Processing Revisited: Auditory Distraction by a Categorical Deviation

Automatic information processing has been and still is a debated topic. Traditionally, automatic processes are deemed to take place autonomously and independently of top-down cognitive control. For decades, the literature on reading has brought to the fore empirical phenomena such as Stroop and semantic priming effects that provide support for the assumption that semantic information can be accessed automatically. More recently, there has been growing evidence that semantic processing is in fact susceptible to higher level cognitive influences, suggesting that this form of processing is instead conditionally automatic. The purpose of the present study was to revisit this debate using a novel approach: the automatic access to the meaning of irrelevant auditory stimuli was tested through the assessment of their distractive power. More specifically, we aimed to examine whether a categorical change in the content of to-be-ignored auditory sequences composed of speech items that are personally non-significant to participants (e.g., a digit among letters) can disrupt an unrelated visual focal task. In seven experiments, we assessed this categorical deviation effect and its functional properties. We established that distraction by categorical deviation is non-contingent on the activated task set and appears resistant to topdown control manipulations. By suggesting not only that the semantic content of the irrelevant sound can be extracted preattentively, but also that such semantic activation is ineluctable during auditory distraction, these findings shed new light on the automatic nature of semantic processing