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.

Jennie Park

Three kinetic sculptures explore relationships between circularity/co-opting/recycling and linearity/polarization/binary-ness, and how personal agency or positionality intersects with these linked mechanics. (They’re NOT “voting machines;” they reflect the operation of many large systems, frameworks and conversations, e.g., the relationship between the DIY ethos and capitalism, between the political far left and far right, and among nested […]

Steve Weir

Alleys The Alleys series documents a lesser-known casualty of the construction boom in Seattle—alleyways. While they often carry a negative reputation, they are an integral part of the urban landscape.

Sam Jones

Noticing Nature Noticing Nature looks at how a new story is needed that is more centered around nature. It explores how everything, including ourselves, is connected, and how important it is that we take the time to slow down and notice the nature that surrounds us every day. http://www.noticingnature.com/

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.

Emily Evans

Emily Evans We Are Sitting In A Room Inspired by Alvin Lucier’s “I Am Sitting In A Room,” this composition was created collaboratively by 12 students in my Production as Composition class at CalArts, currently “sheltering in place” at locations all around the globe. It started with a room tone…Then each student contributed a harmonic […]

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 […]

Estela Anakaren Silva Botello

México Mágico Machista Part of documentation of a feminist protest in Monterrey, Mexico (nationwide initiative) on March 8th 2020— which sought to gain visibility to the alarming rates of femicides in Mexico due to gender violence rooted in machismo, an almost intrinsic, evil element of our culture. *screen printed sign on cardboard *scan of 35mm […]

Brian Griffith

Biological Internal Feedback Biological Internal Feedback is a visual music piece exploring the opaque gelatin that is created when combining the moment of inspiration and the realization of the thought. The video for this piece was created using nature footage taken from around my neighborhood, and abstract video synth textures created in the CalArts Videographics […]