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Preparing Meals As A Metaphor For The Use Of Arts In Worship: A Liturgical Arts Curriculum For Nourishing Chinese-Indonesian Congregations
Full text linkFood plays an essential role in human life. It is of paramount importance to consume an adequate quantity of food to maintain good health, nourish the body, and provide the necessary energy for daily activities. In addition to its role in providing nourishment, the visual appeal of food can bring delight to the eyes, desire to the heart, stimulate the appetite, and prompt humans to consume it. Liturgical art is like food. The metaphor of food or meals, as employed in liturgical arts, serves to emphasize the significance of artistic expression and integration within worship services to nourish and reach people. This thesis presents the potential employment and sharing of liturgical arts and local arts in Indonesian Chinese churches embodied in an arts curriculum design for seminaries in Indonesia. The arts curriculum aims to introduce and equip lay leaders and pastors who will serve in worship and arts ministry to the role and use of liturgical arts as well as to prepare them for the roles of worship and arts ministers as liturgical theologians, pastoral musicians, and missional artists in church and community
Looking Forward to It: Investigating the Role of Anhedonia in Episodic future Thinking
Full text linkEpisodic future thinking, or our ability to simulate personal future events, is implicated in a range of important functioning from problem solving to emotion regulation. However, individuals with clinical diagnoses like depression and schizophrenia struggle to produce future thinking that is vivid and detailed. While these deficits mirror well-document autobiographical memory deficits, they remain poorly understood. The current study aimed to examine the role of anhedonia in episodic future thinking vividness using a within-subjects dimensional approach. A mixed sample of sixty-five undergraduate students and community adults completed two future thinking tasks and one autobiographical memory across two study visits, during which participants were prompted to generate a total of twelve specific future narratives and six specific memory narratives across positive, negative, and neutral valances. Participants completed self-reported clinical status measures including an anhedonia scale at each study visit. Multilevel models demonstrated that anhedonia symptom severity predicted subjective vividness across in future thinking narratives. This remained true even after controlling for depression. Our experimental manipulation of preceding a future thinking task with a memory task (as opposed to a control task) did not prompt participants to generate future thinking that was rated as more vivid. Finally, anhedonia severity predicted self-reported positive, but not negative, affect during our future thinking task, providing further evidence for the delineation of the positive and negative affect systems While future research is warranted, result provides preliminary evidence for the unique role of anhedonia in observed future thinking deficits related to mental imagery observed across diagnoses
Hyper Modular & Seasonal Tavern Design
Full text linkMy thesis artifact is a tavern nestled within a mountainous forest, designed in the style of traditional Chinese architecture. The main goal of this project is to faithfully translate a 2D concept into a high-quality 3D game environment. The scene emphasizes the harmony between architecture and nature, while a dynamic system presents the changes of the four seasons. Spring is bright and full of vitality; autumn features falling leaves and a more subdued, melancholic tone; winter is covered in snow, creating a quiet and tranquil atmosphere.
For a 3D environment artist, concept design, modeling, and lighting are all essential skills. How to effectively integrate these elements and achieve the best possible visual results is a topic worth exploring. In this project, I based the architectural breakdown on the unique mortise-and-tenon structure found in traditional Chinese architecture. By applying the principles of hyper modularity, I was able to freely assemble and reconstruct components, greatly enhancing the flexibility and efficiency of the scene creation process.
In terms of seasonal changes, I aimed to express the passage of time and narrative qualities within the scene, making the environment visually more dynamic. To achieve this, lighting and post-processing are especially crucial, serving as key elements that require in-depth exploration and careful refinement.
Through the development of this project, I became familiar with the full workflow of environment concept design and modular construction. I also gained extensive hands-on experience in dynamic materials, blueprint logic, lighting optimization, and post-processing techniques
Democratization of the Private Markets?
Full text linkU.S. initial public offerings are declining and the amount of private market assets under management are exploding. Simultaneously, the number of retail investors opening taxable brokerage accounts is increasing. Private market assets are hot. Everyone–both institutional and retail investors–wants in on the action. Yet considerations such as financial resources and U.S. securities laws make such investment less accessible for many retail investors. In this short article, we explore this changing investment landscape and, specifically, one development within this craze: retail investments in private company shares via closed-end funds (or CEFs).
Recently, CEFs like ARK Venture Fund and Destiny Tech100, Inc. have been developed with the explicit goal of democratizing equity investment in private companies. ARK and Destiny cater to retail investors, who want to direct their own investments via commission-free trading apps. Many of these retail investors have long been foreclosed from investing in private company shares because they do not qualify as “accredited investors” based on their wealth or income. However, CEFs like ARK and Destiny are changing this longstanding status quo.
Our goal is to begin a scholarly focus on this time of “democratization of private markets.” Accordingly, we explore several considerations with respect to CEFs. These include the lack of voting rights afforded to retail investors in the underlying securities of the fund; the diversification offered to investors; the risk of increasing institutionalization of the private markets; the liquidity of fund shares; and the need for investor education to facilitate retail investor inclusion. We also touch upon proposed legislation which suggests a burgeoning national focus on facilitating more widespread investment in private market assets
Applied Leadership Principles in Multiracial/Multiethnic Churches
Full text linkWe would all be a lot wiser, and a lot smarter if we had a looking glass to see what life holds in store every five to ten years. Upon reflection on our lives, we can discern the transformations, and in some instances, we may recognize the guiding influence of God’s providence. I’m often reminded of the words from the prophet Jeremiah: “For I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11). As I look back on my life, I see how the plan laid out for me was not according to my will or by my design. I was raised in an homogenous community, where 90 percent of households were led by single mothers. The projects were 100 percent black. In this context, I developed a unique perspective on family dynamics. My maternal lineage originates from Jasper, Texas, where my relatives resided during an era characterized by the pervasive presence of Jim Crow laws, Sundown laws, and the activities of the Ku Klux Klan. Raised in a racist community, my cousin wanted more for me. So, I was bused to the only magnet school in Baytown, Texas, for elementary students. The school bus picked up several white students; a Hispanic family, and a Vietnamese refugee (in the United States for a humanitarian reason) who had lost an arm in the Vietnam War. This was my first encounter with diverse ethnicities, which fostered a multiethnic perspective of the world. It was on this school bus that I learned to see and celebrate diversity
Revisiting Dr. King\u27s Beloved Community as an Ecclesial Response to Systemic Injustice in the 21st Century
Full text linkAs a womanist and practical theologian, I am resolute in my conviction of God’s sovereignty and the integrity of His written word. Despite uncertainty and the prevalence of systemic injustice in the world, the Bible has remained a steadfast source from which I have gained insight, guidance, and strength. From a theological perspective, the Bible is the manifestation of my faith seeking understanding. It is the foundation upon which practical theology is built, the embodiment of biblical teachings, beliefs, creeds, traditions, and rituals enacted by individuals within faith institutions and in community. However, it is through a womanist lens that I focus on the intersectionality of issues addressing race, gender, culture, and social justice to make the world a better place. A robust, practical theology that addresses race, gender, culture, and social justice issues can be constructed to impact church congregations and communities when we consider Dr. Martin Luther King’s vison of the Beloved Community as a universal, interfaith model. My proposal of an ecclesial response to systemic injustice in the twenty-first century aligns with the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20 NIV). Adhering to the Great Commission requires upholding the greatest of the commandments meaning to love God and neighbor (Matthew 22:36-40 NIV). My spiritual frame of reference is Christocentric. However, it is upheld by a theology that welcomes and advocates for all of humanity according to the Golden Rule (Matthew 7:12 NIV). I have incorporated literary devices such as vignettes, metaphors, aphorisms, scripture, and italicized quotations to emphasize subject matters and context. I have also utilized Kairos time instead of Chronos time throughout this dissertation for the purpose of narrative transitions as well as to demonstrate how events are often reoccurring within cycles of life and the existence of humanity. Humanity has been adversely affected by the systems of the world for centuries. Inequity and inequality continue to persist because of deeply rooted unjust systems that sustain the legacy of racism and overtly discriminatory practices, policies, laws, and ideologies. When addressing systemic injustice, it is imperative to ascertain the role of structures and institutions within society. My quest to research and examine systemic injustice within political, legal, criminal justice, educational, and health care systems was an awakening. My conclusion is that systemic injustice is perpetrated by the integration of multiple systems that are often interrelated and corroborated by individuals and institutions
Best Practices for Spatial Composition for a Pacing Curve in Combat Design
Full text linkThis thesis explores the best practices for adjusting the level of pacing experienced by players within video games using terminology defined by Mark Davies: threat, tension, tempo, and movement impetus. Using the Dying Light editor, the researcher created a single-player video game level in which pacing was developed following a curve. The goal of creating this level was to demonstrate the success and proper implementation of the best practices identified through research