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.

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 […]

Dongpu Ling

ML Landscape I am interested in the inaccurate and unpredictable result that a machine can make. In order to understand its “mind”, I train the machine using images that have not been cropped, to see how it understands a thing that has not be seen before.

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 […]

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.

Usha Venkat

Radical Practice Radical Practice is a series of podcast conversations between CalArts Graphic Design Program alumnae and current students. Each episode features an alumna with a distinct professional practice, including BFAs and MFAs whose endeavors range from cultural to corporate and from singular enterprises to ambitious ideas. We’ll discuss how they have defined success for […]

Katherine Shea

Georgie Romero Is Done For A horror comedy audio drama podcast. Georgie Romero, a zombie, has risen from the grave, driven to solve the mystery of her former human life with the help of an inept witch and a cynical ghost. Rachel Greenberg, producer/co-writer/co-producer Socks Whitmore, producer/lead actor Evan Johnson, composer/sound engineer Elliot Yokum, sound […]

Joy Chan

14 days in the lockdown April, I was locked up in a central quarantine accommodation. 14 days with the extraction of fresh air and the earth, the only approach for me to connect with the loving world is the peephole in my room door and a locked up window. As I stay, I start to […]