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.

Joana P. Cardozo

The Naked Hours For 100 hours, I cut 2 x 2 inches black paper with scissors and covered the L-Shape Gallery walls at the California Institute of the Arts. I did not speak. I did not use a cell phone or other electronics. I ate, rested, wrote, and meditated as necessary. I left the gallery […]

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 […]

J. Rosenbaum

Set in Stone A series of marble faces, generated by AI, as it learns to create and update its bias’ on gender. First it is trained to generate masculine marble faces, fixed, immovable. Then marble feminine faces are added. It learns to change, a transgender neural network, updating its knowledge and its experience as it […]

Mechatronic Art and Music

Kai-Luen Liang Tomorrow There Will Be Wind ( Automatic Windchimes ) A performance of playing an Arduino controlled set of wind chimes. Vibration motors are activated through a motor driver creating divisions and polyrhythms based on various “states.” First iteration prototype with beer bottle activation.   Trevor Bock 4-Note Bottle Blowing Instrument I have always […]

Susana Pineda

The Mermaid is a collaborative music video and one of the 6 pieces of my thesis project “Inner Creatures.” “Inner Creatures” explores the development motivations, characteristics and environments of the different sub-personalities within the psyche. “The Mermaid” is the sub-personality that deals with the emergence of sexuality, sexual identity, femininity and the need for self-determination. […]

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 […]

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 […]