Welcome

INTERPERSONAL 

          This thesis that you are currently reading has been influenced, shaped, and most importantly validated by a qualified institution (The Rochester Institute of Technology).  Institutionalized art lives in a social system, is successful only if it is identified and accepted as art by others.  If my thesis committee doesn't understand my work, it fails.  Maybe the best example is that classic, enduring fixture of art school: the art critique.  Traditionally, students present work to their professor and peers and receive constructive feedback.  In this context, interpersonal communication skills are valued as much, if not more than native artistic talent.  It can be argued that the entire art establishment pivots on a similar set of values through social validation.  

          Within the art school experience, peers can be as important of a resource as professors.  It was as an undergraduate that I first became involved in a shared studio setting.  While the professors provided formal assignments and expectations, it was from my classmates that I found most of my inspiration and motivation as they too struggled through projects at all hours of the day and night.  During long classes, collaborative doodles with other students were more than a way to pass the time; they taught me about different ways to draw, see, interpret, and share experience.  It was from this seed that my interests in a socially interactive thesis grew.          

           When I began toying with concepts early on, documenting my fellow graduate students was such a natural focus for my thesis that I found myself doing it long before I formally considered it.  With such a diversity of backgrounds, perspectives, materials and pursuits, it was a curiosity and interest in learning from the developing work surrounding me that became the driving force of my thesis.