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.

Hamed Dehqan

Burn This is an abstract and artificial image of burning flowers under sunlight as a lover of love feels burning.     

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 […]

Aashray Harishankar

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 […]

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 […]

Ursula Andreeff

The Renunciation Ceremony I created this painting series as part of the process to understand the emotional and subconscious experience of characters I’m developing for a television series. The series is called The Zomers and is about a zero waste community living in Chicago in 2046 and dealing with the effects of climate change. The […]

Perry Cook

COVID Pan Drum: A Robot Tongue-Drum Rendering of the SARS-2 COVID Virus Genome I’m building a custom robot to play a little lap-sized tongue (steel) drum. A program will read through the roughly 30k base pairs in the COVID 19 (SARS-2 COVID Wuhan Seafood Market) DNA sequence. Particular (known) functioning segments will be sonified when […]