University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Sound, sculpture and presence

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Sound, sculpture and presence

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Content

Sound, Sculpture and Presence

By

Christopher Michael Dowding (Chris Michael)

______________________________________________________________________________

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfilment of the
Requirements for the Degree
Master of Fine Arts

August 2018

Copyright 2018 Christopher Michael Dowding
ii
I. Dedication iii
II. Abstract iv
III. Table of Contents v
IV. List of Figures vi
V. Sound, Sculpture and Presence 1
VI. Bibliography 18

iii
I. Dedication

I would like to thank all my professors, colleagues and peers that have helped me evolve as an
artist and a person. I have been so lucky to have had such amazing, inspirational and creative
people in my path. I hope to meet many more in the future to come. I dedicate this thesis to my
grandmother, Barbara.

iv
II. Abstract

This thesis will aim to explain my current art practice, which I locate in three projects undertaken
during my time in our USC Roski MFA program. Through the use of images of my work and
sources I will give insight into my work as an artist and a maker. I will explain my intentions and
the outcome of these works and share how they have helped me shape a more refined outlook on
my studio practice and my philosophies as an artist.

v
III. Table of Contents

Introduction p. 1

Project 1: Table, 2016 p. 5
Project 2: Decibels of Chris, 2017 p. 8
Project 3: Cerebral Nectar (rock garden), 2018 p. 11
Conclusion p. 16
Figures p. 19
vi
IV. List of Figures

Figure #1: Table, 2016 p. 19

Figure #2: Table, 2016 p. 19

Figure #3: Decibels of Chris, 2017 p. 20

Figure #4: Decibels of Chris, 2017 p. 21

Figure #5: Decibels of Chris, 2017 p. 22

Figure #6: Decibels of Chris, 2017 p. 22

Figure #7: Decibels of Chris, 2017 p. 23

Figure #8: Decibels of Chris, 2017 p. 23

Figure #9: Decibels of Chris, 2017 p. 24

Figure #10: Decibels of Chris, 2017 p. 24

Figure #11: Decibels of Chris, 2017 p. 25

Figure #12: Decibels of Chris, 2017 p. 26

Figure #13: Decibels of Chris, 2017 p. 27

Figure #14: Cerebral Nectar (rock garden), 2018 p. 28

Figure #15: Cerebral Nectar (rock garden), 2018 p. 28

Figure #16: Cerebral Nectar (rock garden), 2018 p. 29

Figure #17: Cerebral Nectar (rock garden), 2018 p. 29

Figure #18: Cerebral Nectar (rock garden), 2018 p. 30

Figure #19: Cerebral Nectar (rock garden), 2018 p. 31

Figure #20: Cerebral Nectar (rock garden), 2018 p. 31

Figure #21: Cerebral Nectar (rock garden), 2018 p. 32

vii
Figure #22: Cerebral Nectar (rock garden), 2018 p. 32

Figure #23: Cerebral Nectar (rock garden), 2018 p. 33

Figure #24: Cerebral Nectar (rock garden), 2018 p. 33

Figure #25: Cerebral Nectar (rock garden), 2018 p. 34

Figure #26: Cerebral Nectar (rock garden), 2018 p. 34

Figure #27: Cerebral Nectar (rock garden), 2018 p. 35

Figure #28: Cerebral Nectar (rock garden), 2018 p. 36

Figure #29: Cerebral Nectar (rock garden), 2018 p. 37

Figure #30: Cerebral Nectar (rock garden), 2018 p. 38

Figure #31: Cerebral Nectar (rock garden), 2018 p. 39

Figure #32: Cerebral Nectar (rock garden), 2018 p. 40

Figure #33: Cerebral Nectar (rock garden), 2018 p. 41

1
V. Sound, Sculpture and Presence
Introduction

In my work I am actively experimenting with the viewer’s mind through their body
within the space of an installation. With different uses of materials and with my own
psychological and philosophical approach, I want to enable viewers to confront their own life
narrative (as I do mine) and engage with the transformational potential and poetic quality of
material. My work functions as an investigation of materials, a self-healing practice, and an
exploration of different modalities of sensations. Using an interactive and spontaneous
composition, I aim to share an experience and create harmony within a possible ritual.
My work is influenced by the notion put forth by Joseph Beuys that everyone is an artist.
In that sense, I am interested in showing that the “process of living itself [is] the creative act."
1
It
is for this reason that I try to entice all senses. Sound can sometimes be left out of conventional
art practices and to me it is really one of the most impactful and powerful mediums around.
Sound has a way to move and illuminate the unseen. Whether you are listening to a symphony or
just to someone sing, this can have profound effects on your energy and the way you feel during
and afterwards. It can be quite moving and captivating to be put quite simply.
Beuys strongly emphasized to his audience that at we all hold an artist inside. He once
said, “Everyone as an Artist implies a perception of life that has become elusive in a general
climate of alienation. People find it hard to come to grips with representations of their lives, or to
relate the circumstances of individual biography to the world at large.”
2
My work is thus

1
Joseph Beuys and Caroline Tisdall. Joseph Beuys (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1979), 7.
2
Ibid., 7.

2
intended as a way for viewers to project their own experiences and to be be present with and in
their bodies.
Beuys’ aimed to reveal a sense of "something" beyond the field of art, and he was able to
point to this in the everyday experience of talking, thinking, teaching and above all living. This
"something" could be considered a type of energy that the artist accesses and invokes. For
Beuys, this was a process of performing a type of social sculpture through which he could
harness and transform energy. In one of his performances of Eurasian staff (1967), he made a
drawing showing an energy line from Eastern parts of Eurasia across the central part of Europe
then bends back towards the East, transformed by the idea of the Western worlds, as an Energy
Plan for Western Man. Beuys' work is oriented toward the idea of the "transformational process
of human consciousness" and of its relation to the world, by the effect of methods that can show
reality in a different light.
3
It comes as no surprise that Beuys' strategy should have something in
common with archaic rituals, if we accept that many of them are "ways of saying and doing,"
aimed at transcending the given and at conjuring up, through some "exceptional perception," a
form of "presence which common perception lacks."
4

Activating a quiet nature with subtlety is another aspect of my practice, whether this is a
material composition, or the construction of a site or ambience. I’m interested in creating the
opportunity for my materials to have a voice when they would normally have otherwise gone
unnoticed. There is a simplicity in the materials I choose, whether they are sand, nectar, glass,
soil, wood, or string. I am able to transform their singular voices with a slight shift of my energy

3
(Beuys, in Goldcymer and Reithman 1982:22)
4
Annie Suquet, “Archaic Thought and Ritual in the Work of Joseph Beuys,” RES: Anthropology
and Aesthetics, No. 28 (Autumn, 1995): 156.

3
and even with the power of electricity and technology, encouraging a shift in quality and
transforming the vehicle and mode of their communication.
When I was setting up Cerebral Nectar, an installation aiming to test multiple projects
containing sound, I questioned the use of sound as possibly being a failure, that is, not being able
to capture for the viewer the sounds of everyday life which were noticed from the outside. The
most interesting part of Cerebral Nectar, which I also found in Roman Signer's Accident As
Sculpture, was that the material, that is, sound, brought into view the most fleeting of
dimensions, the temporal, auditory, and cerebral. The sound in both of these works can be
overlooked and even certain aspects of the sound installation can be missed as they represent
sounds of everyday life, more specifically, white noise: noise containing many frequencies with
equal intensities (e.g. traffic, running water, rain).
Singer's use of materials, the simplicity in his actions, and the stage he sets up allow for
the viewer to enter his work without hesitation. His strategies are not grand gestures, but they
somehow become so through the denouement. I am interested in displaying a real sense of time,
attempting to create a communal fortitude and to embrace the suffering of life. As Martin Luther
King, Jr. once said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.” I try to make
work that speaks from the inside and I intend it to be a place where people themselves can reflect
upon their own lives and experiences.
In my sound, sculpture, and installations, presence and modalities of sensations are the
driving force. I aim to interject sound into objects, forms, and space to highlight and illuminate
subtleties. I investigate the way in which the body moves through my formations and
installations and entice it with different modes of sensation. Those modes of sensation exist as
4
sculptural forms; they are my poetic approach to installation. I view my works as investigations
into the subtleties of experience and sound.

5
Project 1: Table, 2016

Early in my first semester I wanted to investigate and activate a large part of the parking
lot just outside of the graduate arts building where we have our studio space in order to create a
meeting ground for all to use. It was an area that I deemed a communal space and an opportunity.
I created and placed a large table next to the entrance of the undergraduate advanced photo lab,
which is adjacent to the graduate studio’s entrance. I wanted to create a platform not only for the
MFAs to use, but also for undergraduate and graduate faculty. I aimed to initiate space where
people could come together and have an exchange. Table, once completed, fulfilled a number of
these aims, and often became the platform for our weekly seminars and meetings.
Table was quite large at sixteen-feet long and three-and-a-half feet wide. I chose a plain
title, Table, because it would not only be a place for eating meals, but was also intended to be a
meetings place or forum for formal discussions that would be held to settle issues or disputes,
which were frequent throughout our first year as a cohort of seven. Table was made of 100 year-
old Douglas fir that had been milled into four-by-four-inch boards. The lengths of each board
varied from sixteen feet to three feet (Figure #1). It was pressed together using seven long bolts
the width of the table and bolted with washers and lug nuts. After I assembled it, I attached four
tubes of three-inch steel piping as the legs of the table (two on each end) that attached to 10 four
by six inch boards the width of the table. Below these boards were steel casters; this allowed the
table to be moved easily so that the underneath could be swept occasionally. On both the longest
ends were two six by twelve-inch beams of Douglas fir that were attached and tied with plastic
filament to three eight-by-eight-by-sixteen-inch standard cored concrete blocks (six blocks on
each side at twelve total blocks) and acted as benches for both sides. After assembling the table, I
6
installed a large sixteen-by-four-foot green fiberglass roof panel in the right corner behind it
(Figure #2).
Table immediately brought people’s attention to the potentiality of a communal outdoor
area. It would stay in its location for one year until it was deemed unsafe and violating multiple
building and fire codes. While it was present, I noticed that many people sat around it, ate their
lunch there, and had class meetings. It became a place where people could escape their studio
and come out for some fresh air to read, write, and even work on projects.
While attempting to put a language to Table, I was asked what I thought it was or what it
was called. According to Dick Higgins, when Allan Kaprow was starting out in the 1950s with
his new works he “realized he needed a term to describe what was obviously developing into a
new art form, and he called it a happening, because, as he later [said], "I didn't know what else to
call it, and my piece was something that was just supposed to happen naturally.”
5
I liked the
literalness of the term Table as it too was supposed to happen naturally and not have any terms,
conditions or a specialized score of any type.
The simplicity of creating a large table for gatherings ultimately showed me that creating
an object could also invite the viewer and the public to become acquainted with people they had
not met yet or refresh an existing relationship. It also served as a platform for many well-needed
discussions, and would take on the space for some quite difficult conversations in our group with
faculty. The reason I considered this project an artwork was because it activated the space and
created a podium for people to speak up and join in on important conversations.
Additionally, it was more than just materials. Table had a history. It was made of
reclaimed wood from a hundred-year-old barn such that the materials themselves had a history

5
Dick Higgins, "The Origin of Happening," American Speech 51, no. 3/4 (1976): 268.
7
and energy as having been part of a structure that had brought shelter and protection from natural
elements. I had hoped that this history would transfer into our presence and our discussions, to
ease the many tensions our cohort encountered throughout our first year. Table became a sacred
place. Table ultimately depended on the people surrounding it, and on their interaction with the
structure. Without people it would merely have been a wooden structure.
I consider Table to be a form of intermedia, As Fluxus artist Dick Higgins explained it,
"intermedia covers those art forms that are conceptual hybrids between two or more traditional
media, such as concrete poetry (visual art and poetry), happenings (visual art, music, and
theater), and sound poetry (music and literature). The term is sufficiently technical in effect and
is still applied only to the arts."
6

6
Ibid., 271.
8
Project 2: Decibels of Chris, 2017

For my second semester I decided to create an installation in our Graduate MFA Gallery.
My mission was to create a platform that would entice the viewer or participant to become
physically involved, not only as a viewer, but also as a composer. I created an interactive sound
sculpture with tensioned plastic filament that was weighted down with concrete pillars (Figure
#3). The string was then connected to contact microphones that were connected to a mixer and
then routed to a PA speaker system. I also had a drum pad, synthesizer, keyboard, microphone
and Djembe available for anyone to play, join in on or sing through (Figure #4). The string
sculpture was activated by the viewers’ touch and was modified to make sounds similar to a
standup bass. This project was an arena for spontaneous compositions and a platform for people
to become part of a musical and vibrational exchange. It also would become a place to observe
and listen and for people to execute their individual musical scores.
John Cage’s use of sound has been influential for my practice. He has been one of the
many artists that I have consistently reexamined for more understanding into my own work. “
Bonnie Marranca writes that
For Cage each sound was alive, a living organism. All species were welcome in his
landscape but were left uncultivated. It is as if they were “escapes” from the garden into
the wild. Let sounds be themselves. Seen in this light, groups of sounds can be
comprehended as ecosystems, which in turn are linked to sociocultural systems. Whether
animate or inanimate, they are all equal voices in the environment. Cage’s biocentrism
led him to treat sound virtually as a matter of free speech. As a holistic development, this
philosophy of composition embraced the movement from sound system to ecosystem to
9
social system. He preferred to think of the audience more as an ecological than
sociological fact.
7

His holistic approach has been an inspiration. With his use of simple materials, creating scores
and compositions from the everyday life around us, his work will inspire many others for many
years to come. This work would have its own natural and undetermined score, created by its
participants.
In Decibels of Chris I made use of the two large moveable walls in the gallery (Figure
#5) by merging them into a singular wall and covered them in emergency blankets made from
Mylar. The reflective quality of the wall allowed for an alternating LED lighting system to form
a mixture of warm tones (Figures #6, #7 and #8). These two colors came from two distinct
LED’s and were directed toward a specific area to make use of the surrounding walls (Figure
#9). I positioned a fan towards the Mylar covered walls to create a rippled-water effect in their
reflections on the surrounding and adjacent walls throughout the entire gallery (Figure #10).
When the viewer walked in, they were immediately confronted with a small wooden bridge
(Figure #11) that was connected to contact microphones. As it was crossed they were made
aware that they were activating the space and entering into the installation.
As the viewer walked in to the left on the wall was a large fountain. It was made with the
table from Table as its foundation (Figure #12). The table had been rotated length-wise at ninety
degrees on its side. The top of the table faced the viewer topped with a large green fiberglass
roofing-panel which I'd curved against the wall and attached to two two-by-twelve-inch Douglas
fir wooden boards, thus creating a curvature and a pitch so that water would easily slope towards

7
Bonnie Marranca, “The Mus/ecology of John Cage,” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art,
Vol. 34, no. 3 (September 2012): 32.

10
into a large metal water bin that was placed on the end. I chose to use tonic water for the
fountain, since it contains quinine that has a glowing quality when placed under a black light. I
wanted the water to have a glowing quality so as to amplify the movement of the water over a
dark surface. The tonic water was looped via a fifty-gallon water pump used for outdoor ponds,
and was pumped through half-inch black PVC tubing (Figure #13). I had intended for the
fountain to amplify the space sonically. As the water fell into the steel bin it echoed throughout
the entire space. I intended to create this white noise to create a rhythm of repetition and
consistency.
Decibels of Chris threw light upon my critical objectives as an artist, which is to disrupt
the hierarchical treatment of art objects and space and to allow for open exploration and creative
engagement. Breaking through the division of performer/audience, this work allowed everyone
the possibility to become the makers and composers.
11
Project 3: Cerebral Nectar (rock garden), 2018

For my third semester project I made a large sculpture and sound installation in the
Graduate MFA Gallery (Figures #14, 15, and 16). I wanted to really push the limits of the gallery
with this installation. The focal point would be a large platform that was made using a large
fourteen-foot Douglas fir beam planted on two large concrete piers (Figure #17). From that
structure I built a large framed platform with two-by-four-inch Douglas fir framing studs that
were attached to redwood posts underneath. On the very top I placed two four-by-eight-foot
sheets of oriented strand board plywood as the main surface. Underneath was a 5.1 sound system
with a ten-inch powered subwoofer. This sound system was connected to my laptop, which was
playing a sound composition I had created using different sound frequencies and patterns of sin
waves ranging from 20-85 Hz. This was played on a seven-minute loop with 30 seconds of
complete silence after the seven minutes.
Towards the right rear corner was a large sculpture containing a black plastic tote bin
with an eight-foot-four-by-four-inch pine post. This post was selected from a pile of rejected
wood that had insect damage. I was really interested in the way the wood related to the liquid
nectar as a source of fuel. In the same way as the wood had been disintegrated by insects, it is the
nectar that fuels insects and birds. Atop the post was a large Halogen lightbulb that I had
modified by taping a small nail-sized hole in the top so it could be filled with the nectar (Figure
#18). The post was secured with two concrete blocks and two pieces of steel (Figure #19). Below
was a three-foot steel tubing which held a second lightbulb filled with nectar. I installed a water
pump to circulate the liquid nectar, which would be pumped onto the lower lightbulb (Figure
#20). This would also activate the presence of sound (Figure #21) that was installed underneath
12
the sub-surface of an opposing sculpture. This dialogue would also play with the sound coming
from the nearby110 Freeway.
Cage had a way of making it known that the world was already its own magical
composition. He once said, “Sound was conceived as an environment, another kind of landscape,
sounds themselves as points in space, each one creating its own space and the spaces constantly
multiplying, yet everything a part of everything else. The sounds of traffic could wander into a
composition, or wind, rain, thunder, the touch of paper pressed against cactus, water floating in a
conch shell, bird calls, clocks, striking matches, wire coils."
8
By incorporating outside sounds I
worked to enable this kind of magical composition.
Along the back wall centered in between the liquid nectar and a sculpture on the right
rear wall was a sixteen-foot, four-by-twelve-inch sun-warped Douglas fir beam painted in
Tibetan turquoise (Figure #22). The beam was elevated on redwood slabs and insulated with six-
by-six-inch squares of fiberglass insulation. It was intended for viewers to sit on, putting them in
a low-seated fetal position (Figure #23). It also was intended to put viewers on a level allowing
for a perspective of scale. Though it was not indicated that the audience was supposed to sit
there, to lead the audience there I painted its surface an enticing and smooth turquoise. I am not
one to force my audience to partake or even become involved in my works, since I consider that
this engagement should be made according to their own choice and their own will.
As viewers moved to the right rear of the installation, they encountered a large bag of
sand suspended with a neon green rope. The sand bag had a hole on the bottom which allowed
sand to fall along the fourteen-foot red fiberglass roofing panel. While falling to the floor, the
sand creating another constant sound, imitating the potential sounds of rain falling to the floor

8
Ibid., 7.
13
(Figure #24). I wanted multiple perspectives of water sounds. I also wanted the sound to be
constant and noticeable, but not to get lost in the mixture of the installation.
Within the installation, I placed two large plants and one small Bromeliad. These were
meant to act as punctuation in the poetry of space and arrangement throughout the gallery.
(Figures #25, 26, 27). e e cummings is an influential poet for me, whose work has helped
structure my own poetic use of material and placement. The way in which he uses or denies the
normal use of punctuation and his use of word fragmentation is very similar to how I use specific
materials as a source of visual punctuation.
His poem, since feeling it first published in 1926 is an example of how he did not use
punctuation:
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph

14
and death i think is no parenthesis

Roy Tartakovsky has argued that “cummings' linguistic techniques, fragmentation and
recombination of words and syllables," was meant "to break through conventional perspectives;
He broke off lines in the middle of words; placed the first syllable of a word at the beginning of a
poem and the last at the end; used verbs and adjectives as though they were nouns; used verbs,
adverbs and adjectives as though they were nouns; and used nouns as though they verbs.”
9

In a way I find his writing approach intriguing as a sculptor and visual artist. cummings’
unorthodox use of punctuation, the way he organized words on the page and his shifting use of
grammatical categories as a way to work with minutiae, the nearly imperceptible or generally
unnoticed or poorly regarded aspects of language is similar to how I place and arrange objects
and material in space as an attempt to disrupt the usual ways in which people not only rank but
categorize objects and experiences. cummings once said, "for an educated gent or lady, to create
is first of all to destroy . . . there is and can be no such thing as authentic art until the bon trucs
(whereby we are taught to see and imitate on canvas and in stone and by words this so-called
world) are entirely and thoroughly and perfectly annihilated by that vast and painful process of
Un-thinking which may result in a minute bit of purely personal Feeling. Which minute bit is
Art."
10

The main focus of the installation was directed towards the sonic platform strategically
placed in the center. This attracted the viewer to enter the vibrational exchange. I intended to

9
Roi Tartakovsky, “E. E. Cummings's Parentheses: Punctuation as Poetic Device,” Style, Vol.
43, no. 2, Temporal Paradoxes in Fiction and Stylistics in American Literatures (Summer 2009):
217.
10
Marilyn Gaull, “Language and Identity: A Study of E. E. Cummings ‘The Enormous Room,’”
American Quarterly, Vol. 19, no. 4 (Winter, 1967): 652.
15
create a sound sphere that enticed viewers to sit or lie down and actually feel the vibrations. The
multiple and textural vibrations became the attraction.
Viewers would sit or lie down on the surface of the platform and experience the many
different intensities (Figures #28 through 33). Theses shifted from silence to bone-shaking bodily
bass resonance. The body would become its own resonance chamber. I had hoped it would allow
the viewer to become aware of their own physical and bodily presence.

16
Conclusion

As an emerging artist I have taken many paths to arrive where I am today. My studies
began at UCLA as a pre-med biology major. I worked over four years towards that degree while
petitioning as a non-art major and taking art courses simultaneously. After working as an
Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) and in the departments of Head and Neck Surgery, I
found that the medical field was not a good fit for me. It was a difficult realization, especially
after chasing that dream for as long as I could remember. But here was a new and fascinating
goal blooming and that was to become the artist I felt I had always been. With this new
perspective I was able to discover talents and abilities that I never knew I had and my creative
sense was blossoming into a fresh mind ready to learn, work and challenge conventional modes
of art making.
Growing up with my mother and witnessing her practice as a healer in Reiki and applied
kinesiology (muscle strength testing) opened the doors to the many fields I wanted to engage in
my art practice. I learned the meaning and importance of compassion, generosity and being
human with others and absorbing the world and people around me. I learned to have an open
mind and most of all an open heart. I learned this at an early age and it has stayed with me over
the past thirty-plus years.
One of the reasons I wanted to study medicine was so that I could learn the underlying
properties and chemistry of the mind and body. I wanted to locate the underlying scientific
reasons for the transformations I had witnessed with my mother’s patients.
I embrace the spiritual in my work whether you notice it or not. Although it’s not
advertised, it’s ever so present. It’s more about humanity and creative exploration. I am trying to
17
bring together my audience by using many different attractions in my work, whether a cerebral,
visual or physical enticement. I am after a sensory attraction which allows the viewer to choose
what is magnetic to them in a work of art.
My practice is more than merely creating objects with which to interact. It is also more
than simply needing to have people be a part of my work and its experience. It is about allowing
people to navigate and explore a world that is not only intellectually and conceptually based, but
where one can find a place to contemplate a simultaneous visual, auditory, cerebral and a
spiritual experience.
Allan Kaprow had a free flowing style with his “environments” and “happenings,” and
his studies into the everyday life of the human condition is a large part of my current philosophy
and art practice.
Joseph Beuys for me was meticulous and brought to his work many other aspects such as
poetics, philosophy, and ideas about his audience and the existence of energies. His work has
many layers and is conceptually rich and and very generous. This I greatly appreciate and always
try my best to be generous as well.
In addition, e e cummings has given me a poetic voice through which to disassemble
conventional structures and practices and to rearrange a space and materials much as I would
write a poem. I’m ultimately trying to form my own visual language with its own uses and
meanings. I aim to disrupt conventional narratives and I've committed myself to a method which
is not definitive, but rather is open for interpretation and interrogation.
In my recent practice I have only attempted to disrupt the hierarchical treatment of art
objects and space so as to allow for open exploration and creative engagement. Breaking this
division of performer/audience allows us all the opportunity to become makers and composers.
18
VI. Bibliography

Beuys, Joseph, and Caroline Tisdall. Joseph Beuys. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1979.

Gaull, Marilyn, “Language and Identity: A Study of E. E. Cummings ‘The Enormous Room,’”
American Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Winter, 1967): 652,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2710893

Higgins, Dick, "The Origin of Happening," American Speech 51, no. 3/4 (1976): 268-272

Hoyt, Sarah F. “The Etymology of Religion.” Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 32,
No. 2 (1912): 126-129: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3087765. Accessed: 05-03-2018 16:19
UTC.

Marranca, Bonnie. “The Mus/ecology of John Cage” A Journal of Performance and Art, Vol. 34,
No. 3 (SEPTEMBER 2012): 28- 34. The MIT Press: http://www.jstor.org/stable/26206429
Accessed: 05-03-2018 16:51 UTC.

Neulinger, Jacob, "Roman Signer at Galerie Martin Janda, Vienna, Austria," Frieze Magazine,
Dec 10, 2008, (Article has been removed since I viewed it).

Suquet, Annie, “Archaic Thought and Ritual in the Work of Joseph Beuys,” Anthropology and
Aesthetics, No. 28 (Autumn, 1995): 156, The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the
Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20166935
Accessed: 05-03-2018 16:51 UTC

Tartakovsky, Roi, “E. E. Cummings's Parentheses: Punctuation as Poetic Device” Style, Vol. 43,
No. 2: Temporal Paradoxes in Fiction and Stylistics in American Literatures (Summer 2009):
215-247: Penn State University Press: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/style.43.2.215
Accessed: 03-03-2018 22:11 UTC.

19
Figure #1

Figure #2

20
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Abstract (if available)

Abstract This thesis will aim to explain my current art practice, which I locate in three projects undertaken during my time in our USC Roski MFA program. Through the use of images of my work and sources I will give insight into my work as an artist and a maker. I will explain my intentions and the outcome of these works and share how they have helped me shape a more refined outlook on my studio practice and my philosophies as an artist.

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

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Asset Metadata

Creator Dowding, Christopher Michael (author)

Core Title Sound, sculpture and presence

School Roski School of Art and Design

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Fine Arts

Publication Date 07/17/2018

Defense Date 05/29/2018

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag chris,Christopher,dowding,michael,OAI-PMH Harvest,presence,Sculpture,sound

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Wedell, Noura (committee chair), Guirguis, Sherin (committee member), Ogata, Amy (committee member)

Creator Email dowding@g.ucla.edu,dowding@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-17570

Unique identifier UC11670358

Identifier etd-DowdingChr-6407.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-17570 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-DowdingChr-6407.pdf

Dmrecord 17570

Document Type Thesis

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Dowding, Christopher Michael

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA