7 FRIDAY, MAY 7, 2017 7:00 - 10:00 PM RECEPTION TO FOLLOW KELLEN AUDITORIUM 66 FIFTH AVENUE, 1st floor NEW YORK, NY
INES GERBER
Before studying documentary at the New School. Prior to her graduate studies at the New School, Ines completed an MA in Art and Visual History. Her interests center on cities and the visual representation of place. She lives in Berlin and works as a freelance editor and cinematographer.
The Cit y & The Cit y
This production-based thesis includes a compilation film composed of a montage of scenes shot in Berlin in the period between postwar partition and the construction of the wall (1945-1961). Our imagination of this era is usually overshadowed by images of Nazism and war which preceded it and the concrete embodiment of the cold war which followed it. The film is a visual mapping of the divided city and the two worlds created in its cinematic depiction Advisors: Deirdre Boyle, Deanna Kamiel
GOLDIE POLL
Goldie is a human adult with three degrees, including her latest, an MA in Media Studies. She is from Vancouver, Canada. You can check out more of her work at goldiepoll.com. Yes, that is her legal first name.
Feminism is Cool: Using Web-Based Media to Educate and Engage
Utilizing a website and digital and physical social media, this thesis provides information and deconstructs many of the dominant narratives surrounding feminism. The project strives to counteract existing oppressions and micoragressions and to engage audiences by locating them within the context of intersectional feminism allowing them to incorporate these values into their own lives. Website: w w w.f e mini s mi s c o o l .c o m Advisors: Dawnja Burris, Brian McCormick
ELLEN REYNOLDS
Ellen is a documentary cinematographer, an editor, and an educator. Past positions have included teaching production at The University of Pennsylvania and the Scribe Video Center in Philadelphia; as well as giving video workshops for learners at all levels, and producing documentary work about children, schools, and communities. She chose to attend The New School to focus on her cinematic work about children, and to expand it to emphasize work for children that offers representations of their points of view, questions, experiences and concerns. She made this decision after seeing beautiful work with “children at the center” in other parts of the world, but not here in the United States, and asking “why?” as well as “how?”.
Children’s Documentaries
Research and observation reveal that the presence of “cinematic documentary” for children is rare to non-existent in the United States today, even as it enjoys a new “golden age” for adults. This is not the case in other parts of the world, where brilliant, thoughtful, and useful Documentaries do make it to children’s screens. This thesis begins an inquiry that may illuminate processes and products around the development, production, and distribution of children’s documentaries, and in doing so further clarify the path forward for myself and other scholars, producers, and advocates desiring to make a contribution to the field. Advisors: Peter Haratonik, Rebecca Alvin
NIMA MOINPOUR
Nima holds a BA in Analytical Philosophy from UCLA. He moved to San Jose/Silicon Valley 18 years ago and has lived in Tehran, Los Angeles and New York. His research focusses on the interconnection of place, habitat and local/common species of technology and engineering within the Silicon Valley locale. To better understand these interconnections, he focused his studies for his MA in the realm of media and urban environments.
Interconnected Veins of L and and Media Technology Enthusiasm in Silicon Valle y: A Media Archeology Inquiry
To fully grasp the tonality that Silicon Valley emits as a place of media technology enthusiasm and innovation, I traced various crystallizations of geography, geology, economics, and social-cultural histories across the landscape of Silicon Valley. My aim is to understand how these factors contributed to Silicon Valley becoming a major actant in media history and culture. My project explores what happens to our understanding and study of media technology when media archeology is used to investigate the interconnected veins of geomorphology and social-economic enthusiasm for media technology in Silicon Valley. Advisors: Elizabeth Ellsworth, Dawnja Burris
ROBERT (MIKE) ELROD
Mike is a media and information literacy instructor at Young Harris College in Georgia. He also teaches Cinema Production and Public Speaking to online high school students, and in traditional classrooms with college students. Mike's focus is on teaching image languages to broader audiences through production and instruction.
The Every-Hero
Visual mythologies in cinema, television, comics, and video games are often described in concrete terms of racial and gendered representation. This thesis explores the idea of fluidity between the details of a visual mythologies and the archetypal impressions that connect them to one another. This connection allows the act of audience interpretation to encompass individual experiences as a method of identification with characters that don't share our gender or racial background. Advisors: Dawnja Burris, Brian McCormick
BRIAN DONLON
Brian has spent his career in media working in programming, production and digital posts for such companies as CBS, Lifetime, Fox, MSNBC and CNBC. But prior to his work in “electronic” media, he spent more than 10 years as a reporter and editor for USA Today and the Gannett Co. utilizing his BA in Journalism from Pace University. He completed the Masters in Media Studies program at The New School in January of 2017.
Mixed Media: Newspaper Survival in Digital Domains and the Reorientation of American Democr acy
It has been said newspapers are the first draft of history. Now history can be "made" in seconds in a 140 character Tweet. This thesis began as a study of how the newspaper industry was fighting to remain culturally relevant in the digital age. It weaved in how newspapers have been vital to the checks and balances of American democracy. As writing continued into 2016 the "life" of the paper changed almost daily as events during the Presidential campaign and election put the balance of power between digital delivery systems and traditional newspaper journalism into daily mainstream conversation as a result of "fake news" and "alternative facts" put forth by the election of Donald Trump. This thesis examined the role and the value of newspaper journalism as a watchdog of democracy as society goes full bore into the age of digital information. Advisors: Sumita Chakravarty, Dawnja Burris
JELENA GREGOV
Jelena has spent her career in advertising, working in strategic communications. She has solved problems for brands in industries as diverse as telecom, media and publishing, non-for-profit, retail, automotive, FMCG, financial services, fashion, beauty, travel and hospitality. She is interested in exploring the perceptual aspects of digital technologies and their intersection with human subjectivity. She is currently based in Brooklyn, NY.
Perceiving With Sensors: The Body and the Quantified Self MovemenT
In Phenomenology of Perception (1945) Merleau-Ponty explored the idea that some sensorial capabilities can be extended by instruments. He illustrated the point with the example of a blind man’s walking stick that becomes part of his sensing system. I used this insight to further explore how digital self-tracking technology relates to its user’s perceiving body. The group of artifacts relevant to this thesis includes sensor-laden objects applied to the body. The focus of this thesis is in understanding this mediating role that QS technologies may have for their user’s lives. Drawing on post/phenomenology, techno-cultural studies, and object-oriented philosophy, this thesis is focused on uncovering the potential of QS technologies to challenge and transform their users’ self-perception by conditioning new pathways of understanding. Advisors: Christiane Paul, Eugene Thacker
MORENO BELIC
Moreno is a Brooklyn-based digital storyteller working in the fields of experience design, new media and surveillance art. He has honed his skills working in companies like BBDO, Young & Rubicam, McGarryBowen Innovation Lab and, currently, Fake Love– A New York Times Company.
NO MORE SECRE TS
Lack of privacy has become a pervasive threat to a basic human right - the right to be let alone. People’s interaction with the world has been reduced to data points, the interpretations of which often result in wrongful conclusions about people’s actual intentions, actions and behaviors. No More Secrets is a production based thesis in the form of a hybrid reality game that encourages physical-digital interaction from the player, making choices and data be the defining act in the creation of the player’s data body. Advisors: Christiane Paul, Vladan Nikolic
LIVIA SA
Lívia is originally from São Paulo, Brazil. She moved to San Francisco to study Cinema Production and worked with a diversity of independent filmmakers and photographers. She is currently based in Brooklyn and working freelance. Lívia's work focuses on human rights issues, using both documentary and experimental filmmaking. Working beyond conventional approach to cinema, she is interested in altering the viewer's perception while stimulating different senses in her storytelling.
Distant Memories of a Coup
Living away from your country of origin can evoke all types of feelings and emotions. This is particularly true when your home country is going through a political crisis, when the distance can feel even more intense. This participatory multimedia project builds on the feelings and memories of Brazilians living outside of Brazil in 2016, when a coup d’état took place and infringed on the country’s democracy. Through the usage of postcards, audio interviews, and super 8mm film footage, the project documents not only personal statements but also serves as a collective historical archive that also seeks to empower and connect those who share similar thoughts and emotions. Advisors: Shannon Mattern, Amir Husak
MEDIA STUDIES GRADUATE PROGRAM THESIS PRESENTATIONS The MA program in Media Studies at The New School prioritizes the integration of media theory, practice and production and we acknowledge scholarship in a variety of media formats. Our students’ theses involve systematic inquiry into media studies-related phenomena, problems or questions and represent more than the accumulation of facts, footage, data, or references. Instead, they demand the identification and development of productive methods for conducting research and the analysis or interpretation of ideas, resulting in the solution to an articulated problem, or the systematic search for meaning. Whether written or produced in a traditional or emergent media format, media studies student theses build and sustain a coherent and creative engagement with conceptual, aesthetic, technical, or theoretical problems and opportunities - germane to our field.
CAROL WILDER
Dasha Kova
Dean, School of Media Studies
Graphic Designer
DAWNJA BURRIS
RED DOG PRODUCTIONS
Associate Dean and Thesis Director
SMS Student Driven Creative Agency
NATHANIEL EPSTEIN Thesis Collective Coordinator