2025 MFA Graduate Research Projects
The Community Garden is a virtual data visualization of community and its effects on individuals. Users can explore questions about their community, share their thoughts, and help other people’s plants grow. The color and type of plant is controlled by the question answered and the theme of the answer. The garden will continually evolve over time as different experiences are added and users help each other’s answers grow and eventually be harvested!
Inspired by my exploration of Philippine folklore and mythology, my thesis project introduces the captivating world of Filipino mythological beings known as Halimaw—a Tagalog word meaning “monster.” These legendary creatures, drawn from traditional stories and ancestral beliefs, are brought to life through an action-packed and immersive board game experience titled Halimaw: The Monstrous Game of Volcanic Destruction.
You Eye is an interactive web application and research project created by Lukas Emory as part of his graduate thesis exploring the role of artificial intelligence in art and design education. The project investigates how AI can be introduced to creative classrooms not as a replacement for human decision-making, but as a tool to enhance critique, accessibility, and reflection in the design process.
In today’s world, graphic design is everywhere. Our digital space is saturated with advertisements for companies, products, and entertainment. There’s so much information to take in and we have just mere moments to make sense of its message before we’re presented with the next. It can be overwhelming.
How different was graphic design years and years ago? What did communication design look like before we invented the web and life was so fast-paced? Societies around the world lived very differently in the past, and their communication methods were simpler, but their messages were more complex. The meaning and significance of their methods were meant to endure over time, some of which we still see today. What if we chose to look more critically at our own symbols, design and messages in the present, and decide for ourselves how meaningful it is to us?
Future Nostalgia is a speculative design exhibit that blurs the line between memory and imagination, asking: What if the past we remember isn’t the only version that existed? Set in an alternate 1996, the exhibit reconstructs a high school yearbook through the lens of retro-futurism—merging analog artifacts with digital anomalies. Visitors will encounter looping timelines, glitched memories, and fragments of a world where wearable tech, AI jalopies, and HUD overlays were the norm.
