About

Reflecting California Institute of the Arts’ experimental ethos, the Institute’s Digital Arts Expo rolls out its latest projects integrating cutting-edge engineering and computer science with visual and performing arts. Highlighting new student and faculty projects made over this last academic year, the DAE’s exhibitions and performances run from early afternoon to late evening in the ROD Music Hall, MOD Theater, Main Gallery, Wild Beast, Machine Lab, and Lund Dance Theater. The DAE reflects the latest practices in technologically sophisticated arts, involving viewers in interactive experiences, bringing artists’ perspectives to computer games, forecasting future directions of digital performance, animation, and projection mapping, and exploring the latest in software and hardware as a means of commenting on our increasingly connected world.

CalArts has long been at the forefront of arts and technology practice, and is uniquely positioned to develop such a curriculum. The Institute’s Music Technology curriculum is unique in the world, engaging students in custom software design, circuit design for human-computer interfacing, and the use of robotic mechanical systems and artificial intelligence in musical and artistic practice. CalArts’ School of Film/Video, with its renowned animation program, has been a global leader in innovations in computer graphics and advanced digital media technologies. And the newer Digital Arts Minor program offers opportunity for inter-disciplinary collaboration between students of all the schools within CalArts and provides students with the skills and knowledge to create digitally driven works of art.

On May 4th, the public is invited to experience the Digital Arts Expo’s exhibitions and concerts on the CalArts’ campus featuring creatively adventurous and technologically imaginative new work from across all disciplines of the Institute.

Directors & Producers
AJAY KAPUR

Ajay Kapur is currently the Director of the Music Technology program (MTIID) at the California Institute of the Arts, as well as the Associate Dean for Research and Development in Digital Arts. He is also Founder and CEO of Kadenze, the Creative Arts MOOC. He received an Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in 2007 from University of Victoria combining computer science, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, music and psychology with a focus on intelligent music systems and media technology. Ajay graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton University in 2002.

COLIN HONIGMAN

Colin is a new media and sound artist whose work focuses on interactivity and augmented spaces. He is an alumni of the CalArts Music Technology BFA and MFA programs. His MFA thesis focused on the idea of “Next Music” which he conceived as music made in/for/with the augmented space. Currently he is working as a Creative Technologist at the ed-tech startup Kadenze, teaches in the Music Technology and Digital Arts programs at CalArts, and actively collaborates on with other LA artists.

Madeline Falcone

Madeline Falcone is a producer and violinist dedicated to the performance of new and experimental music and to the support of innovative artistic events. As part of the CalArts Digital Arts program, Madeline has served as producer of the Digital Arts Expo since 2014. She has also been Associate Producer for the Greater New Orleans Youth Orchestras Summer Festival since 2008, assisting in production of two East Coast tours to Carnegie Hall, and has produced events for the Ojai Music Festival, REDCAT, and the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance. As a performer, Madeline co-directs the Los Angeles-based Isaura String Quartet, described in a recent review for New Classic LA as holding the audience “utterly spellbound,” and has worked with artists including Halsey, Jóhann Jóhannsson, The Airborne Toxic Event, Honus Honus, and Deltron 3030. Madeline holds a MFA from CalArts in Violin Performance.

Student Creative Directors
Eliane Lima

School of Film/Video

Eliane C. Lima is a Brazilian artist. She immigrated to the U.S. in 1999 and received a BA in Cinema from Binghamton University, State University of New York and a Master of Fine Arts in Film from San Francisco Art Institute. Lima’s work has shown at Liverpool Biennial, SFMOMA, Anthology Film Archives, Pacific Film Archives, Brazil, Cuba, Canada, and elsewhere. She was awarded the SF Weekly Mastermind 2012 prize and featured an installation in homage to George Kuchar at the Art PadSF 2012. Currently, she is working on her second Master’s degree in film at the California Institute of Arts, exploring sexuality through video installation and performance.

Timothy Torres

School of Music, Music Technology: Interaction, Intelligence & Design

In early 2016, Timothy graduated from Glenbrook South High School outside Chicago. He currently studies Music Technology at California Institute of the Arts. Timothy practices, plays go, composes code and programs poetry.

Hannah Logan Peterson

School of Film/Video, Film Directing

Hannah completed her BFA at the New School in New York where she studied documentary and experimental film theory. She worked as an apprentice to Alex Gibney on the feature documentary Going Clear, the Amazon series the New Yorker Presents, and the Netflix series Cooked prior to coming to California. Additionally she was a staff member for the 2015 Flaherty Film Seminar. Most recently she worked with writer and director Sean Baker on his forthcoming feature, The Florida Project as well as his award winning short film, Snowbird. In addition to working in various roles such as AD and producer in several of her fellow students’ films, she is currently writing and directing a trilogy of narrative films set in Los Angeles.

Kam Ying Lee

School of Theater, Interactive Media and Performance

Kamyi Lee is a visual artist hailing from Macau. She is studying for a Master of Fine Arts in Interactive Media and Performance at the California Institute of the Arts. Working primarily in the medium of video art, Kamyi specializes in the fields of graphic design, cinematography, and art directing. In 2015, Kamyi founded her own graphic design studio named Atelier Cocorico. She has worked on architectural audio-visual projection mapping projects in live performances, establishing dialogues between space, landscape, and architecture. Kamyi believes that video art can progress beyond flat surfaces to further push the boundaries of the performing arts.

Nuri Baylerian

School of Dance

Nuri Baylerian, originally from Milwaukee, WI, came to CalArts as a dance major with aspirations to collaborate with video, projection, and live music. Through her four years here she has had the opportunities to make her own music videos, perform in dance for camera works, and do live performances for musicians and other visual artists. Artists she has worked for that fulfilled her artistic cravings and inspirations include Diavolo | Architecture in Motion, Andre Tyson of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Jodi Porter of American Ice Theater, and James Franco and Rabbit Bandini Productions.

Chrysanthe Tan

School of Music, Performer-Composer

Chrysanthe Tan is a composer, violinist, and writer who specializes in musical poetry and composing for string instruments. As a violinist, she performs internationally, records with artists like Ariana Grande, Paul Anka, and Halsey, and plays in an Balkan-experimental violin-guitar duo, Duo Meranti. As a composer, she explores the intersections of music and language, is working on an album of musical poetry called Homecoming, and has an album of chamber music called Stories on iTunes and Spotify. Chrysanthe holds an MFA in Creative Writing from CalArts, a BA in Creative Writing with Music Honors from Stanford, and will graduate from the CalArts MFA Composer-Performer program in the Spring.

Trey Gilmore

School of Theater, Interactive Media

Over the course of his career Trey has crossed various roles in the world of live entertainment. Coming from a Theatrical background he began his career as a director and lighting designer specializing in site specific and immersive theatrical experiences. He eventually plunged into the world of Video for live performance working as a designer, associate designer, and media server programmer for a multitude of Broadway, off Broadway and National tours. His work has varied in presentation from stage to gallery where he teases out the gap between spectator and art and how best to bridge this gap.

Ivy Liu

School of Music, Music Technology: Interaction, Intelligence & Design

I like spooky sounds, blobby shapes, cute illustrations, and happy music!

Francisco de Leon

School of Theater, Technical Direction

Francisco is a BFA-2 technical director from Koreatown Los Angeles hoping to work in themed entertainment or live events.

Andrew Piepenbrink

School of Music, Music Technology: Interaction, Intelligence & Design

Andrew Piepenbrink is a musician, programmer, and live sound technician pursuing a BFA in Music Technology at California Institute of the Arts. Prior to coming to CalArts, he studied computer science at Santa Barbara City College, and has exhibited work at the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. His work explores the application of developing technologies to live music performance and installation art, with an emphasis on sound and interactivity. His interests include actuated acoustic instruments, musical applications of embedded computing, and Afro-Brazilian drumming.

Niels Bugge

School of Art, Art and Technology

Niels Bugge’s practice consists of making sound collages, cg-animations, and masks, which are used as vessels for storytelling. He collects stories from whoever wants to share them, either in person or online. Niels considers the stories as ethnographic records of the interrelations between social interaction and imagination, collective as well individual. The stories he uses originate in childhood, often against a backdrop of resistance against or embrace of conventional gender roles. He is currently based in Los Angeles where he is studying for an MFA at CalArts in the Art and Technology program.

Daniel McNamara

School of Music, Music Technology: Interaction, Intelligence & Design

Daniel McNamara is an artist, instrument designer, and musician in the Music Technology MFA program. Daniel’s primary focus while at CalArts has been the development of tools that facilitate creativity; encompassing projects involve a statistical sequencer for generative rhythmic-based music, Ticklers: a mobile electroacoustic instrument (working under the direction of artist and musician Ali Momeni at CMU), and the current iteration of Art Arcade being realized for the DAE.

Ana Pérez López

School of Art, Experimental Animation

Ana Pérez López is a Spanish animator and journalist based in Los Angeles, California. As a current MFA candidate in the Experimental Animation program at Calarts, she is looking for new creative challenges.

JP Yepez

School of Music Alumni, Music Technology: Interaction, Intelligence & Design

JP Yepez integrates music, programming, visuals, engineering, and interaction into his artistic work. Originally from Quito, Ecuador, his artistic career began as a guitarist with an interest in contemporary styles, and he was involved in projects such as Aftersoul Elektro Project (2007), Jesus Christ Superstar at Teatro Nacional Sucre (2009), and singer-songwriter Abby Lyons (2014–present). He is fascinated by the unpredictable in generative design, and he explores human-technology interaction through his artistic practice. He recently completed his MFA in Music Technology at the California Institute of the Arts, and now continues his efforts in supporting arts education through his work at CalArts and Kadenze Inc.

Ashwin Vaswani

School of Music Alumni, Music Technology: Interaction, Intelligence & Design

Ashwin Vaswani is a creative coder who graduated from CalArts with a BFA in Music Technology & a minor in the Digital Arts. He produces art in the form of code, electronic music with voice, & photography. Interested in connecting ‘the internet of things’ to modern art forms, Ashwin tries to find the balance between user experience & artistic representation. Proficient in modern web languages such as Ruby & Javascript, his goal is to become a web developer who can find the balance between art & reachability. He supports open source software, privacy, & net neutrality. Currently, he is interested in data visualization using the web.