DOI
https://doi.org/10.25772/FA8T-Y429
Defense Date
2020
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts
Department
Graphic Design
First Advisor
Nicole Killian
Second Advisor
Roy McKelvey
Third Advisor
Lap Le
Abstract
The text calls itself a guide, but it is no guide. From the genre of guide, it borrows the outlines and silhouettes and lines between things and spaces and ideas. It lingers on the shadows of its subject(s); it is attentive to the periphery of its world; but it cannot take you there. There is no there. It lacks the authority of the guide; it lacks the lucidity, the efficiency, the false totality of the guide; it lacks the confidence.
The guide embodies its own anxieties. This makes sense, as its reason to exist was born on the one-way highway of technological determinism and cradled in the eclipse of nihilism. It is from the gravity of these contexts that the guide is trying to escape or is (more likely) propelled by, into its own certain and empty end. This is the only language the guide has seemingly ever known. The guide is not convinced of itself.
What is a guide built around shame? What is a guide that interfaces with chaos instead of the rational? What is a guide formed from the twisting mists of a human heart?
Rights
© Aidan Quinlan
Is Part Of
VCU University Archives
Is Part Of
VCU Theses and Dissertations
Date of Submission
5-22-2020
Included in
Creative Writing Commons, Game Design Commons, Graphic Design Commons, Metaphysics Commons