The annual Undergraduate Symposium on Research, Scholarship and Creative Endeavors was held April 19-23, 2021 and was an opportunity for undergraduates to present, to a larger audience, what they have learned through their research. The virtual symposium also provided a forum for students, faculty, and the community to discuss cutting edge research topics and examine relationships among research, education, and discovery. More than 200 student researchers participated in the symposium.
Lu’s presenation “An Ecosemiotic Approach to Land Art” aimed to critique the motives of artists’ use of landscape as a medium during the 1960’s Land Art Movement.
“Examining several works through an ecosemiotic lens, we see that Land Art can signify the relationship a modern human has to the Earth. While often inevitably symptomatic of the Western ideology from which it was born, many works of Land Art mimic Animistic monuments and practices. The question is whether the work is successful in its attempt to reestablish human attention and connection to the natural world, or if it is an expression of empty spirituality. In a time of increasing environmental crisis, it is important to examine whether a human mark on the land is disruptive or replenishing,” stated the abstract of the presentation.
In the past year, Lu’s research has critiqued the postmodern posture of New Age Spirituality movements, climate adaptation in a globalist age of hyper-materialism, and the cultural therapeutics of possession. Lu has worked in collection management at the 91ֿ School of Art Collection and Galleries, cataloguing and photographing 20th century African artifacts. In addition, Lu, who is also a DJ, recently collaborated with two DJ friends to found , a community-oriented online radio station. Verge went live in January 2021 and is now in its fifth month of broadcasting, hosting over 100 radio shows, DJ sets, and podcasts monthly.