BXA seniors are required to complete the BXA Capstone Project.
The goal of the capstone project is to give a student the opportunity
to weave together the interdisciplinary elements of their curricula
into an integrated project. The creation and completion of such
a project can be an important integrative and fulfilling capstone
for students. These projects have included thesis papers, outreach
projects, poetry readings, musical and dramatic performances, and
visual art exhibitions.
62-401 & 402 BXA Capstone Project, Fall and Spring: 18 units
The BXA Capstone Project gives BXA students the opportunity to demonstrate the extent of their interdisciplinary work over the course of their academic career. The Capstone Project should include elements that span the student’s CFA and H&SS concentrations (for BHA students), CFA and MCS concentrations (for BSA students), or CFA and SCS concentrations (for BCSA students). The project can be either a scholarly or creative endeavor, and may take one of many possible forms (e.g., a written thesis, a compilation of creative work or works, an experiment and report, a computer program or animation, etc.).
The BXA Capstone sequence covers both semesters of a student’s senior year. In the fall, students are enrolled in 62-401 BXA Capstone Project I (9 units), which has no required classroom time. Instead, students spend the semester doing the research and foundational work necessary for the project, as well as meeting with their faculty and BXA advisors. In the spring, students enroll in 62-402 BXA Capstone Project II (9 units), a weekly seminar in which students share their work and critiques with their peers as they create their Capstone Project and prepare to present it at the annual Meeting of the Minds Undergraduate Research Symposium held each May.
For more information on how to register for the BXA Capstone
Project courses, contact Stephanie Murray, msmurray@andrew.cmu.edu. Forms are available in MMCH 107 or download (PDF).
BXA Capstone Project Highlights
Melissa Acosta BHA 2011,
Global Systems & Management and Designwith an additional major in Human-Computer Interaction
Iccha: Multimedia Strategies for Promoting English-Language Acquisition among Bhutanese Refugees www.melacodesign.com
Refugees arrive with little cultural and linguistic preparation to life in America. This project consists of a learning platform that empowers refugees to gain essential English communication skills and leverages the knowledge of volunteer tutors. The system consists of a web interface that allows tutors to rapidly create content for the iPod so refugees can download the lessons and practice them during the week.
M. Callen
BHA 2011, Creative Writing and Art
Always Here
This project consists of a simple message temporarily installed and photographed at various locations throughout Pittsburgh and its environs. The message, glowing in neon, SOMEONE IS ALWAYS HERE, talks about both presence and absence. Depending on context, the message can be literal or metaphorical.
Anthony Catania
BHA 2011, History and Architecture
Building Isolation: Barriers to a Sustainable Built Environment
Through the loss of community, narrow agendas, and a blatant rejection of the past, the design of the built environment after World War II is neither socially, environmentally, nor economically sustainable. This composition proposes a theory for thinking about future growth—one with a premise of continuity and coherence, not isolation and rejection.
This animation is a short focusing on the beginning and end of a relationship between the two main characters. Their relationship is illustrated (literally) through the actions of their hearts rather than their own actions or words. The animation is an experiment in mixing digital and traditional media to create a unique aesthetic.
Sarah Habib
BHA 2011, Psychology and Art
Meditation of the Word www.sarahhabib.com
This project employs text and the abstraction of letter forms to create a universal image, attempting to elicit the words’ meanings from the image made. This piece is meant to be a small gesture to erase language barriers: the borders between those who understand and those who do not.
Stephanie Huang
BHA 2011, Multimedia Production and Design
Classic Film, Modern Design: Re-Branding for a 21st-Century Audience www.stephaniehuang.com
This project develops a branding system for an imaginary Audrey Hepburn film festival. The goal is to modernize the appeal of the classic films of Audrey Hepburn for a contemporary audience and features the program’s festival identity, program booklet, and promotional posters, as well as a series of contextual renderings of the campaign applied in a cityscape.
Laura Paoletti
BCSA 2011, Computer Science and Art
The Yarners: Waking Ugly lcpaoletti.carbonmade.com
This super-hero-fairytale is an animation set in the 1950s, a time when gender roles were strictly enforced. A decade after the war, a sixty year old woman with the ability to work power tools, as well as having the experience of knitting countless numbers of socks for the troops overseas, takes up her knitting needles and welding torch once again when her home town is in danger of an alien invasion.
Heejin Park
BHA 2011, Visual & Material Culture and Art
Government Funding for the Visual Arts: Toward the Pluralism from the 1970s www.heejinpark.com
The arts in the United States need to receive some form of government funding on the national, regional, and local level. The arts cannot survive, especially in the current economic climate, without a base subsidy. This composition demonstrates how and why federal and local funding can benefit creativity when made available across disciplines and media.
Alia Poonawala
BSA 2011, Biological Sciences and Drama
OPA! Greek Performance & Cooking Show
This project demonstrates Greek culture and educates about its cooking traditions (the passing down of ancestral recipes, family-style eating) and food sciences (the process of curing olives, a diet based on the land, etc.). Food is used as a medium because it is rich with meaning. It can represent whole cultures and their history, families and their recipes, and the natural resources of a country made edible by sophisticated processes. This endows food with the power as an effective medium to educate.
Kristen Staab
BHA 2011, Creative Writing and Art
TODAY, I kristenstaab.com
This project addresses the nature of our recording of time and events. Our systematic organization of such data into blocks (i.e. today) renders them analogous, even identical. With this distancing from actual events and the subsequent categorical documentation thereof, we forget the specificity of the present as it becomes the past. What we are left with is the evidence of time: static, monochrome, textual fragmentation.
Katherine Chin BHA 2010, Psychology and Architecture with minors in Chinese Studies and Photography Dreams of Architecture: an exploration of understanding space and consciousness through dreams
In our dreams, our unconscious selves can express desires and fears that are normally disguised from our conscious lives. I will use the practice of lucid dreaming to explore the spaces and buildings that are depicted in my dreams to find deeper and hidden connections to my own self. These spaces and emotions will then be depicted in a series of pinhole photographs.
Shannon Deep BHA 2010, Creative Writing and Drama Deliberative Theater
Deliberative Theater is a performance-based event designed to spark debate and discussion about a chosen topic. Participants watch a short piece of theater about the topic, and afterward are led through small and large group discussions and a panel about the issue, and offer proposed solutions.
Xiaoyuan Jiang BCSA 2010, Computer Science and Art AI Brushes: Applying swarming and goal seeking behavior to digital paintbrushes A digital art program that applies a Boid-like flocking algorithm to the paintbrushes to create a unique trailing effect from the brushes’ movement.
Ana Kim BSA 2010, Biological Sciences and Art with a minor in Biomedical Engineering Yok-Mang (Desire)
The human body has been the subject of artistic inquiries since the dawn of human history. Drawing and painting the human body allows artists to understand its structure and surface and to interpret it as a vessel and actor of human experience and desire. Such interpretions result from the arst’s own bias or perspective as well as what the viewer brings. I started exploring the grotesque, uncanny and the abstract potential of the human body. I emphasized such aspects by distorting the human form and our point of view. The distortion was not invented, but actual. While I was painting, I found a common thread among my paintings,
which was: desire.
Hyun Jeong (Helen) Kim BHA 2010, Psychology and Music Performance Development of Children as Musical Beings: the benefits of Eurhythmics music education
Children learn music in a unique and different way in Eurhythmics classes. Instead of using sheet music or an instrument, they use their own bodies and senses. During this semester, I observed and recorded music learning of children in Eurhythmics classes. I noticed how Eurhythmics developed in children a sensitivity and the ability to analyze, to perceive, and to appreciate music. In my final presentation, I will show a series of video clips that demonstrate children’s learning as they begin to listen and recognize internal beats, natural weight, phrases, and musical flow.
Tina Li BHA 2010, Psychology and Music Performance
Music and Emotion
This project examines different ways in which people relate emotions to music. Through this study of the relationship of music and emotion, I hope to discover some correlations between them.
Rebecca Scully BCSA 2010, Computer Science and Art The Mighty Palm
A Flash animation which promotes the benefits of being flexible and open minded through the use of a Palm tree, an Oak tree, and birds.
Graham Swindoll BHA 2010, Philosophy and Drama with a minor in Photography On Several Obsolete Notions in the Theater
Through a string of philosophical essays, texts, videos and a short play I have attempted to explore the limitations of the contemporary theatrical scene, and propose ways of moving forward. The core of my work was an exploration of the relationship between theory, criticism and practice, and how to reconcile these often contradictory modes of analysis and creation.
Elizabeth Barsotti BHA 2009, Creative Writing and Book Arts
Husband and Wife
An interdisciplinary project which explores marriage and gender through art, craft, and writing. Project work includes letterpress books with original poetry, paintings, altered furniture, quilts, and collected objects, and was originally displayed as a two-gallery art exhibit in November 2008.
Brian Callahan BHA 2009, Anthropology and Music Performance Technology v. RIAA v. the People
This project is a look into how technology has changed the music industry, how the industry has responded to those technological changes, and the attitudes and reactions of consumers towards the music industry in response to the industry’s response.
Christopher Cornwell BHA 2009, English and Art Psychophonic Odyssey
A narrative comic which breaks from the established conventions of contemporary comics by encapsulating the history of the medium and by incorporating elements of other media and art practices through a meandering pastiche of styles and content. The comic’s narrative examines contemporary American culture and juxtaposes it with the county’s history, focusing on American mythology of the past and present, folk tales, and popular culture.
Magali Duzant BHA 2009, Visual Culture Studies and Art with a minor in Photography and Digital Imaging The Parkhurst Slides
A photographic book exploring the found and appropriated image. The photographs use cinematic techniques to re-tell the story of a New England family from the 1940s thru 1970 using family snapshots.
Victoriya Kovalchuk BHA 2009, Creative Writing and Communication Design A Fictional Autobiography
This project is a series of linked stories written over the past two years at CMU. A designed book houses these stories, which share the pages with original family photographs, abstract drawings and also poetry.
Nathaniel Krause BHA 2009, Architectural Visualization, Music Performance, and Film Media Face to Face
A short narrative film that explores the creative process through the inadvertent interdisciplinary interactions of three students.
Emily Lee BHA 2009 Creative and Professional Writing & Art with a minor in Business Administration Sequence
The goal of this unique illustration book is to explore a love of narratives both through imagery and words. Throughout the course of this semester, the project has been focused primarily on the process of experimentation involved in designing a book, rather than the finished book itself.
Matthew Siffert BHA 2009, Psychology and Music History with a minor in Jazz Performance What Does Miami Think Now?
This project investigates the sentiments of the Cuban community in Little Havana, Miami, towards the future of US-Cuba relations. Siffert spent spring break of 2009 in Miami -- shortly after US President Obama changed visitation policies to the island, and Cuban Raul Castro shifted high ranking officials in his cabinet -- interviewing members of the Cuban community on the subject. This work is a collection of case studies, recounting the perspectives of five Cuban exiles.
Jessica Thurston BHA 2009, Urban Design and Professional Writing with a minor in Hispanic Studies The Book of Robot City: Brownfield Redevelopment in Hazelwood
A collection of papers and proposal submissions that detail the development of the Hazelwood, Pennsylvania-based brownfield site. The 178-acre site is being redeveloped using robotic technology to create educational, commercial, and social space that will benefit the economy and the community of the Pittsburgh region.
Refugees arrive with little cultural and linguistic preparation to life in America. This project consists of a learning platform that empowers refugees to gain essential English communication skills and leverages the knowledge of volunteer tutors. The system consists of a web interface that allows tutors to rapidly create content for the iPod so refugees can download the lessons and practice them during the week.
This project consists of a simple message temporarily installed and photographed at various locations throughout Pittsburgh and its environs. The message, glowing in neon, SOMEONE IS ALWAYS HERE, talks about both presence and absence. Depending on context, the message can be literal or metaphorical.
Through the loss of community, narrow agendas, and a blatant rejection of the past, the design of the built environment after World War II is neither socially, environmentally, nor economically sustainable. This composition proposes a theory for thinking about future growth—one with a premise of continuity and coherence, not isolation and rejection.
This animation is a short focusing on the beginning and end of a relationship between the two main characters. Their relationship is illustrated (literally) through the actions of their hearts rather than their own actions or words. The animation is an experiment in mixing digital and traditional media to create a unique aesthetic.
This project employs text and the abstraction of letter forms to create a universal image, attempting to elicit the words’ meanings from the image made. This piece is meant to be a small gesture to erase language barriers: the borders between those who understand and those who do not.
This project develops a branding system for an imaginary Audrey Hepburn film festival. The goal is to modernize the appeal of the classic films of Audrey Hepburn for a contemporary audience and features the program’s festival identity, program booklet, and promotional posters, as well as a series of contextual renderings of the campaign applied in a cityscape.
This super-hero-fairytale is an animation set in the 1950s, a time when gender roles were strictly enforced. A decade after the war, a sixty year old woman with the ability to work power tools, as well as having the experience of knitting countless numbers of socks for the troops overseas, takes up her knitting needles and welding torch once again when her home town is in danger of an alien invasion.
The arts in the United States need to receive some form of government funding on the national, regional, and local level. The arts cannot survive, especially in the current economic climate, without a base subsidy. This composition demonstrates how and why federal and local funding can benefit creativity when made available across disciplines and media.
This project demonstrates Greek culture and educates about its cooking traditions (the passing down of ancestral recipes, family-style eating) and food sciences (the process of curing olives, a diet based on the land, etc.). Food is used as a medium because it is rich with meaning. It can represent whole cultures and their history, families and their recipes, and the natural resources of a country made edible by sophisticated processes. This endows food with the power as an effective medium to educate.
This project addresses the nature of our recording of time and events. Our systematic organization of such data into blocks (i.e. today) renders them analogous, even identical. With this distancing from actual events and the subsequent categorical documentation thereof, we forget the specificity of the present as it becomes the past. What we are left with is the evidence of time: static, monochrome, textual fragmentation.
In our dreams, our unconscious selves can express desires and fears that are normally disguised from our conscious lives. I will use the practice of lucid dreaming to explore the spaces and buildings that are depicted in my dreams to find deeper and hidden connections to my own self. These spaces and emotions will then be depicted in a series of pinhole photographs.
Deliberative Theater is a performance-based event designed to spark debate and discussion about a chosen topic. Participants watch a short piece of theater about the topic, and afterward are led through small and large group discussions and a panel about the issue, and offer proposed solutions.
A digital art program that applies a Boid-like flocking algorithm to the paintbrushes to create a unique trailing effect from the brushes’ movement.
The human body has been the subject of artistic inquiries since the dawn of human history. Drawing and painting the human body allows artists to understand its structure and surface and to interpret it as a vessel and actor of human experience and desire. Such interpretions result from the arst’s own bias or perspective as well as what the viewer brings. I started exploring the grotesque, uncanny and the abstract potential of the human body. I emphasized such aspects by distorting the human form and our point of view. The distortion was not invented, but actual. While I was painting, I found a common thread among my paintings,
This project examines different ways in which people relate emotions to music. Through this study of the relationship of music and emotion, I hope to discover some correlations between them.
.
.
.