Aashray Harishankar

is a composer, producer, and keyboardist from Irvine, CA. He has musical foundations in Carnatic keyboard, jazz piano, composition, and audio engineering. He earned his B.A. in Music Technology from Stevens Institute in Hoboken, NJ and is currently pursuing his MFA as a Performer-Composer at CalArts.

Flight

“Flight” is a 2019 concept album mirroring the timeline of human life, from birth until death and beyond. Each song, lyrically and sonically, represents a different time period, but all are reflections of life as a whole. Beginning with “Liftoff/Zephyr”, we rise into a period of birth and infancy, of wonder and innocence, carrying into the youthful bounce of “The Sweetest Thing” and onto the teenage angst of “Break the Chain”. “Never Had Much Faith” introduces the first feelings of love as a young adult, building to the hardened ambition of “Pilot”. In “Gemini” we hit mid-life, a period split between youth and old age. As we reach old age, “After Dark” and “Oceans” bring in feelings of isolation, nostalgia, and loss of purpose, but a love of life is reborn in “Another Dawn” and leads to enlightenment at the end of life as we pass to “The Other Side”, escaping the atmosphere and into the unknown.

Kiera Dillon, Michael Cozine, Matt Renzo, Julian Hernandez, Eddie Wilkins Jr., Andrew Chrepta, Andrew Alvarez, Tristan Demetri, Sumika Inoue, Carlos Schmitt Dissenha, Justin Tanksley, Erik Rabasca, Alex Kaufman, Kavi Srinivasaragavan, Justin Kilpatrick


Laura Sofia Perez

Modesty Odyssey Unreleased music video for “Modesty Odissey” by Brooklyn born artist Melanie Charles, whose creative fluidity spans jazz, soul, experimental, and her own Haitian roots.

Sungjae Lee

Wind and Wave Drawings is a series of motion drawings that intrinsically shows only one piece of thread; the video describes how the shape of the thread is changed by the wave of water and wind. By gathering these diversified shapes of the original thread, this project challenges the fundamental origin of the world that […]

Leslie Crapster-Pregont

Light: action and reaction “Light: action and reaction” highlights the awe and wonder of the simple transition of light throughout the day. Time lapse video captures the movement of the sun and its reflection/refraction across dichroic tiles. The changing pattern of color and light encourages the viewer to slow down and appreciate shadow art that […]

Emily Eisenstein

plasticity My clothes my hair my face my body. The way I look and the way I feel are at war with each other. A film about gender in isolation.

Jiayu Zhang

Unbuilt Door Unbuilt Door is a collaborative sound installation between Jiayu Zhang and Joana P. Cardozo during the emergency state of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spring 2020. Jiayu and Joana were studio neighbors at CalArts. This piece offers an imagination practice for the participants to visualize the border of their individual space. The participants are […]

Kai Luen Liang

Flag ASMR “On Sept 11th, 2001 I watched the twin towers falling with my father. Glued to the TV. A silent demolition. An American reality TV show. In the weeks that followed, I started to see American flags everywhere. Especially from immigrants of all colors, flying the flag out of a sense of fear of […]

John Tejada

Future Stars class compilation album John Tejada, a frequent guest on Touched Music compilations, hatched the idea of turning the final project for his CalArts “Advanced Electronic Music Production” class into a compilation album for the established label. John Tejada Presents Future Stars features 15 of Tejada’s students at their best, as well as an […]