Welcome to the 2016 BFA and MFA Media Arts Festival and screenings! Here you will encounter the next generation of film, video, new media, animation, and sound artists as SAIC students present their thesis projects. In this festival, you will experience innovative live-action shorts, all kinds of animation, feature-length narrative and nonfiction works, video essays, and experimental digital and audio pieces that will provoke, pleasure, instigate, and surprise you.
In FVNMA and at SAIC, we embrace radicalities of different shapes, sizes and forms in our experimental Media Arts. We encourage and are committed to a fluidity of ideas, theories, and practices. FVNMA students move far beyond traditional approaches, often working in interdisciplinary ways. The works here cross and intermix technologies, genres, and approaches, manifesting new and hybrid forms of expression.
We salute all these graduating students in celebrating the work that they will now share with us. We appreciate your time, labor, love, and the community that you have built together with us these last few years as you worked hard to compose, write, shoot, record, re-enact, direct, perform, edit, sample, digitize, experiment, generate, render, draw, model, design, photograph, chroma-key, interact, loop, re-mix, re-author, re-form, collaborate, improvise, craft, and hone your materials, ideas, sounds, and visions.
We congratulate you all, and wish you the best in your continuing lives as artists!
Mary Patten
chair, FVNMA
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
May, 2016
Presented by the Department of Exhibitions and Exhibition Studies in collaboration with the Film, Video, New Media, and Animation
Department, and the Gene Siskel Film Center.
Special thanks to Chris Sullivan, Daniel Eisenberg, Eric Fleischauer, and Claudia Hart for their work programming the 2016 Festival. And an extra-special shout-out to Brandon Doherty of the Gene Siskel Film Center, and to Mickey Mahoney, Emily Kuehn, Andrew Zoleta, and Dan Holmes in FVNMA for technical support.
FVNMAS 2016 program five (download)
May 12
Program 5
4:30 – 5:50 p.m.
Alexandra Williams
Laith Khalifeh
Zachary Barner
Haruka Motohashi
ALEXANDRA WILLIAMS
BFA FILM, VIDEO, NEW MEDIA, AND ANIMATION
Virtual Shrine, 2016
3D animation sound, color
4:25
An animation based on the structure of the Kiyomizu-dera temple in Kyoto, Japan that explores the documentation of time and space via footage my grandparents took of the temple in the 1960s combined with my own video and 3D scans.
LAITH KHALIFEH
BFA FILM, VIDEO, NEW MEDIA, AND ANIMATION
As It Is, 2016
16mm film transferred to video sound, b/w
14:18
Shot on 16mm black and white film, As It Is explores of the unresolved resentments caused by the weight of our responsibilities. Special thanks to Valentina Manzoni and Zachary Ridgeway Barner.
ZACHARY RIDGWAY BARNER
BFA FILM, VIDEO, NEW MEDIA, AND ANIMATION
Africa 2.5, 2015 digital video and stills sound, color
9:52
Africa 2.5 is a surreal experimental video essay subverting the typical conventions of the white-hetero-male going to Africa for a mission’s trip, examining the political remnants of colonialism through evangelism and privilege.
HARUKA MOTOHASHI
BFA FILM, VIDEO, NEW MEDIA, AND ANIMATION
Cities Like NYC, 2016
HD video sound, color
16:00
Cities Like NYC is a documentary / video diary exploring the interaction between a director and people living
in diverse neighborhoods in New York City. This piece captures the lives of the people through the question of their relation to garbage.
ALEXANDRA WILLIAMS
BFA FILM, VIDEO, NEW MEDIA, AND ANIMATION
The Hole, 2015
2D computer animation sound, color
3:31
An animation based on the opening scenes of a feature-length screenplay about a mysterious hole in the forest that leads to other dimensions.
Third First Person, 2014 digital video
sound, color
6:53
A camera that longs to be human slowly removes its lens.
FVNMAS 2016 program six (download)
May 12
Program 6
6:00 – 7:45 p.m.
Tavia David
Cory Feder
Jeremy Lyon Freedberg
Jamie Farney
Davy Walker
Andra Helton
Dena Springer
Anya Alford
TAVIA DAVID
BFA FILM, VIDEO, NEW MEDIA, AND ANIMATION
W2W, 2016 digital video sound, color
5:00
W2W is a coming-of-age story with a specific focus on a young girl growing up in Chicago. Through pain, laughter, and gentle scolding on the part of her grandmother, she discovers true facets of her identity. W2W seeks to tell a story from the perspective of a contemporary black family and all the complexities that come along with being such.
CORY FEDER
BFA FILM, VIDEO, NEW MEDIA, AND ANIMATION
Heavy Blanket, 2016 hand-drawn animation sound, color
7:00
Underneath the heavy blanket there is a train stopping in all the same places and it is passing between all the known and unknown evils of today and yesterday. Who is to say what evil really is; what makes a train stop in one place over and over again?
JEREMY LYON FREEDBERG
BFA FILM, VIDEO, NEW MEDIA, AND ANIMATION
Cave, 2016 digital video sound, color
20:58
An excerpt from an experimental documentary exploring the routine, monotony, and small joys of a near-century-old man. The artist has lived with and documented Bernie, his grandfather, for four years, getting to know him yet remaining somewhat distant. The piece strives to define a perception of a relative and the artist’s view of himself, while accidentally revealing the cynical, uncomfortable undertones of a soft-spoken, kind old man.
JAMIE FARNEY
BFA FILM, VIDEO, NEW MEDIA, AND ANIMATION
Old Lorraine, 2016 digital video
sound, color
5:22
The piece is entirely hand drawn and colored by watercolor. The work was originally written by the artist; image and sound followed suit. Special thanks to Judith Raphael for voice-acting the character of Lorraine.
DAVY WALKER
BFA FILM, VIDEO, NEW MEDIA, AND ANIMATION
Unto The Circle, 2016 digital video
sound, color
20:00
They think about the L.A. water drought. And their mom getting electroshock therapy when she was younger. And now they’re lost. It’s going to be sad. But it’ll be funny. And beautiful they hope. Pay them their money. In cash.
ANDRA HELTON
BFA FILM, VIDEO, NEW MEDIA, AND ANIMATION
Conveyor, 2016 puppet animation sound, color
6:00
MA grocery clerk’s judgmental fantasies take on a life of their own.
DENA SPRINGER
BFA FILM, VIDEO, NEW MEDIA, AND ANIMATION
Solar Pulse, 2014
Sandin Image Processor transferred to video sound, color
3:11
Solar Pulse is a collaboration between Michael Sullivan (MFA 2015) and Dena Springer (BFA 2016). Using the Sandin Image Processor, a video synthesizer, and the E-MU Synthesizer, the film hopes to create a sublime experience strictly through analog means.
ANYA ALFORD
BFA FILM, VIDEO, NEW MEDIA, AND ANIMATION
Anx, 2016
digital animation sound, color
2:30
A young woman struggles with a little monster interrupting her work.
FVNMAS 2016 program seven (download)
May 12
Program 7
8:00 – 9:30 p.m.
Rodrigo Gratacós Brum
Alex Drosen
Laura Callier
Yiyi Ma
Kristen Shea
Andrew Thomas Thrash
RODRIGO GRATACÓS BRUM
MFA FILM, VIDEO, NEW MEDIA, AND ANIMATION
Cinema Secreto, work-in-progress digital video
sound, color
30:00
During the winter, a gardner decides to do a movie while his girlfriend is moving away.
ALEX DROSEN
MFA SOUND
Just As, 2016
electronic music (digital audio recording)
sound, color
4:50
Just As is a piece of electronic music whose generative medium is audio recording. The captured sounds of voices, instruments, and the artist’s urban environment were starting points in a recursive process of composition, performance, recording, and playback. Melodic patterns are invoked at different speeds and degrees of fidelity. An animal squeals in fall frost against emulative human vocalizations.
LAURA CALLIER
MFA SOUND
Computer Love, 2015 digital video
sound, color
3:56
Computer Love seeks to explore the intimate relationships we develop with our computers. Maybe you’ve seen “Her” by Spike Jonze, which delves into the emotional relationship that can develop with technology. But what about a technological relationship based on more carnal desires?
YIYI MA
MFA FILM, VIDEO, NEW MEDIA, AND ANIMATION
Beyond Fields of Paper, 2016 digital video
sound, color
7:08
The story is about a woman who is in her middle age; after her child has grown up, after she has dedicated half of her life to holding the family, she tries to pursue some space for herself—create some art works about her life experience, about her imagining of death. In order to express her confused feelings on life…. It is short and where will it go?
ALEX DROSEN
MFA SOUND
Generation Sense,2016
electronic music (digital audio recording)
sound, color
7:06
Generation Sense begins with two discreet sound sources set in combination. A recording of Drosen’s grandfather’s hearing aid feedback is multiplied into a shrill, shifting sonority. A candid recording of Drosen’s grandmother playing the piano, slowed and fragmented, appears softly and repeats. The composition leaves this initial sonic relationship suddenly, opening up to progressing fields of varied activity. The sound of the piano returns, incomplete, later, some place else.
KRISTEN SHEA
POST-BACCALAUREATE FILM, VIDEO, NEW MEDIA, AND ANIMATION
Still Haunted, 2015 digital video
silent, color
3:18
Still Haunted is a series of videos created for Claudia Hart’s Virtual Installation class, which culminated in a custom augmented-reality application designed in dialog with the 18th- and 19th-century paintings for the Art Institute’s European Painting and Sculpture Wings. By adding animated and performative elements to images from these eras, these videos attempt to draw out some of the resonances between Europe and Japan during this time period. In the course of exploring this relationship, these videos recall the Shintoist theme of inanimate spirituality. The original scenes are haunted by the spirits of dormant objects and impressions of activities in past and future moments. Enchanted objects transcend their state of suspense and dynamic action breathes life into stillness.
LAURA CALLIER
MFA SOUND
Selfie, 2016 digital sound, color
2:27
As the saying goes, if you can’t love yourself, how can you love anyone else? Selfie investigates the relationships we create with ourselves and others through cellular devices and digital media.
ANDREW THOMAS THRASH
MFA FILM, VIDEO, NEW MEDIA, AND ANIMATION
CAT STATE, 2016 digital video sound, color
7:00
What is it like to not know the exact condition or fate of beings absent from our present situation? “CAT STATE” presents a reflection on superposition, uncertainty, entropy—a kind of memento mori or maranasati inspired by Schrödinger’s cat.