Kai Luen Liang

MFA 2 - Music

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 appearing to be on the wrong side.

The sound of the twin towers falling in my memory is silent. Filmed from far away. As the second plane hit, there was no sound on TV. I heard the sound via the sound of my own heart beating and the breath of the newscaster trying to be as professional as possible as they had to report a major catastrophe in real time, live in front of the world.

Flag ASMR is the attempt to recall a memory. An attempt to close a schism caused by a fear of the lines people cross and the fears of uncertainty, harm, and danger. What is the sound of a silent memory. The sound of it being touched, taken apart, and reordered.”

Redefining Boundaries

Building new systems, setting new parameters. Boundaries are constantly defined and redefined. An experiment in generative systems, generative image/ film and sound relationships. Exploring mutual relationships/ co-habitations of sonic and visual digital spaces.

Manufacturing Landscapes

*** warning: Contains strong flashing lights….

Manufacturing Landscapes:

A short film investigating the metaphors of vision used in surveillance hardware brand videos. Uses various Generative Adversarial Networks(GAN)/ machine learning image synthesis techniques to generate material related to vision and changing landscapes. Also looks at word associations with images by using text descriptions to generate images. The images generated were then used as “found footage” for the film.

Christine Lee

Happy Headroom “Happy Headroom” was part of my mid-residency show titled “Living Threads” in February 2020. The immersive installation consisted of 4-channel video and sculptures. In this video, my mom and I perform rituals as a visceral process to create a dialogue between changing states of self and site. Hair, simultaneously dead and living, functions […]

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 […]

Ruoyi Shi

“I create 3 videos to show a world hidden inside the reflection of water. I use my tentacle that is made out of water to find a link between the world that surrounds me right now and the memories of adventure that only I know. No matter if it is humidity or moisture, I sense […]

Flenoit Webster

calvery xp faith in the 21st century and a look at the possible events- there is a chamber of people found in a basement of a prison who have been there since the late 1900’s suddenly an execution order has been created for all 144’000 souls and NOW an agent from the feds is investigating […]

Bo Li

From 1942 to 2020 Why are you making this piece? Since the beginning of the epidemic, I have followed the notice from the local authority to stay at home and stay alive. Since the food in my house has become thinner recently, I have to go out to hunt. Firstly, I found that I was completely expired, so […]

Tim Feeney

Multimeda recordings of spontaneous music: prompts for assembling sound and image, running remote-distanced seances, and/or time-based annoyance. CalArts Percussion Ensemble: Morgan Alford, Kristyna Svihalkova, Henry Delargy, and Eric Lennartson Free Improvisation Ensemble: Camille Kiku Belair, Maria Alejandra Bulla, Rebecca Drapkin, Hazel Feiner, Brian Griffith, Jeremy Rosenstock, Adam Zuckerman, Kai Cleaveland, Stefany Glik, Bjorn Gustafsson, Terry […]

Cindy Pepper

Boxing Can Be Fun A contemporary duet danced on 2 wooden cubes performed by 2 dancers from Ballet West to the music of Keenan Webster composed on the African instrument called the baliphone. cynthiapepper.com