Date of Award

5-2010

Level of Access Assigned by Author

Campus-Only Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

English

Advisor

David Kress

Second Committee Member

Patricia Burnes

Third Committee Member

Jeffrey Evans

Abstract

A trust fund kid, posing as a drug dealer to maintain street cred, opens an art gallery designed to fail. A self-employed drummer sells sperm to raise funds for a new kit before his band embarks on their first-ever tour. A former chess prodigy-turned- dominatrix paints sixty words a day on a giant canvas to stave off the coming Singularity. A hipster blogs about his fictional tagger alter ego and bumbles into quick fame with a series of paintings on CD covers. Hidden Wheel is an unflinching reflection of the growing complexities of navigating art, commerce, and the internet. Its use of intersecting plotlines illustrates the confusion and potential of the early 21st century and the evolving ways in which its inhabitants try to make a mark in the specter of financial ruin and shifting technologies. Hidden Wheel's narrative frame is the scholarship from a 24 century scholar attempting to reconstruct 21st century history using only paper documents remaining after a solar flare erases the world's digital media storage in 2308. By distancing the narrator from the story he reconstructs, space is created for observations of both our time period and the notion of artistic ownership.

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