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Embodiments

April 26, 2024

Panel 5

Archives

DIGITAL ARTS & NEW MEDIA

Master's Exhibition Archive
 

A collection of the seminal exhibition research projects of the graduating students of the Digital Art & New Media program at the University of California, Santa Cruz.  

2023

Heap is Full is a viscerally immersive exhibition offering alternative orientations to our mediated worlds. Eight exceptionally talented artists – Ian Costello, Nicki Duval, Carl Erez, Angela Fan, Rose Klein, Livia Perez, Patrick Stephenson and Rory Willats – present new works of media art developed through concentrated inquiry over a two-year period. Heap is Full is curated by Yolande Harris in collaboration with the artists of the DANM 2023 cohort.

Above: Rose Klein’s Games of the Oppressed.

Background: Rory Willats’ Come, Fur(r)ies, Dance.

Above: Forest Reid’s THE LAST GALACIAN SWITCHBOARD.

Background: Laura Boutros’ AMDUAT: THE 12 HOURS OF RA.

2022

THE DIGITAL ARTS AND NEW MEDIA MFA PROGRAM PRESENTS: UNFORGETTING

MOHAMADREZA BABAEE, dani wright, LAURA BOUTROS, DAVE CRELLIN, FOREST REID

The UC Santa Cruz Digital Arts and New Media (DANM) MFA program presents unforgetting the culminating exhibition of the 2022 MFA cohort. Five artists, Mohamadreza Babaee, Laura Boutros, Dave Crellin, Forest Reid and dani wright present new works of media art in the form of installations, games, experimental theater, video and site-specific installation, curated by Yolande Harris.

2021

During their program at UC Santa Cruz the cohort of 2021 which graduates this year have endured a series of trials: the viral pandemic, which forced them to adopt new modes of virtual working; a Cost of Living Allowance (COLA) strike in which many of this cohort were active; an unusually active fire season in which the flames grazed the UCSC campus and the Black Lives Matter protests– an outswelling of public rage against the pandemic of US racism. This exhibition is not ‘about’ any of these things, but the works presented bear the traces of students’ negotiation of these processes and events as they make the transition to artistic practice outside of the University.

Above: Erin Single’s DUST WARNING.

Background: Patrick Stefaniak’s CLOTH^3.

Above: Evie Chang’s Buddytale.

Background: Marjan Khatibi’s Virtual Empowerment.

2020

Virtual Empowerment is an immersive experience and visual narrative in the form of sociopolitical fiction. The project is designed to inhabit both virtual and physical spaces.

Buddytale is a game exploring our attachments to virtual pets and the nature of our relationships to them. The game invites players pick out and care for their own virtual buddy and play through snapshots of their life together: their first meeting, picking out a toy at the pet shop, comforting them during a particularly bad storm, and so on, until they must say goodbye.

2019

The Digital Arts and New Media (DANM) program presents Receivership, its 2019 MFA Thesis Exhibition. The exhibition represents the culmination of two years of intensive study and creative work, encompassing a range of artistic practices and approaches to the use and examination of new media. The Digital Art/New Media MFA program of UC Santa Cruz brings together the arts, digital technologies, the humanities, and the sciences to produce artworks and scholarly research that together examine culture, society, and the digital world.

Above: Richard Grillotti’s Resonant Waves: Immersed in Geometry.

Background: Shimul Chowdhury’s Stiching Solidarity.

Above:  Tony Assi’s Gaze Relations.

Background: Carinne Knight’s Presence Interference.

2018

The 2018 DANM MFA exhibition represents the culmination of two years of intensive study and creative work, encompassing a range of artistic practices and approaches to the use and examination of new media. The exhibition’s title, Interstices, alludes pointedly to the historical moment and conditions that have shaped their work and lives. Meaning “an intervening space” and “an interval between things, parts, or times,” Interstices signals the artists’ conviction that this a time of transition and seeking, a time to find the cracks in current reality, to see beyond it and break through to a new space. Their work testifies to the belief that art can and should help change the world. 

2017

The 2017 graduates from the Digital Arts and New Media (DANM) MFA Program are presenting their work in the exhibition, ultraSHIFT. The DANM MFA Program serves as a center for the development and study of digital media and the cultures that they have helped create. Faculty and students are drawn from a variety of backgrounds, such as the arts, computer engineering, humanities, the sciences, and social sciences, to pursue interdisciplinary artistic and scholarly research and production in the context of a broad examination of digital arts and cultures.

Above: Scott Tooby’s Embedded Soundscaping.

Background: Marguerite Kalhor’s the this: artifice + superfice: two scoops of banality.

Above: Mónica Andrade’s Marqués.

Background: David Harris’ Edges of Color.

2016

The 2016 graduates from the Digital Arts and New Media (DANM) MFA Program are presenting their work in the exhibition, Blind Spot. Thirteen artists are creating and iterating within realms not easily decipherable and detected in the conventional art world. Each artist has worked in the critical spaces of game design, performance, post cinematic space, scientific theory, economic systems, or interactive media to resist and expand long-established, canonical meanings of art.

2015

THE DIGITAL ARTS AND NEW MEDIA MFA PROGRAM PRESENTS: NEW ALCHEMY

JANA BOLOTIN, JOEL DREAM, STEVE GERLACH, KRISTIN GILLETTE, WAYNE BOOTH MARCI, SEAN MCGOWEN, WES MODES, NATHAN OBER,  JOAN RAPSO, ALEXANDRA TEIXEIRA RIGGS, KELLY SKYE, DIETRICH “SQUINKY” SQUINKIFER,

Alchemy can be defined as “a seemingly magical process of transformation, creation, or combination.” This same definition could be used to describe the artist process, and speaks to science, discovery, and the unattainable. This year’s works include sculptural installations, interactive documentary, playable digital media experiences, and even the recreation of a 1940’s shantyboat. In New Alchemy, transformation is at the core of the artists’ work, and is core to their personal journeys during their two years as graduate students.

Above: Steve Gerlach’s Topological Projections.

Background: Nathan Ober’s Orbits.

Above: Lisa Banks’ Suspended Motion Series II: Scroll II (detail).

Background: Holly Findlater’s Rendering O(H)M.

2014

THE DIGITAL ARTS AND NEW MEDIA MFA PROGRAM PRESENTS: UNDERCURRENTS

LISA BANKS, GENE A. FELICE II, HOLLY FINDLATER, DAVID HARRIS, MATTHEW JAMIESON, PHIL LY, STACEY MASON, JOHN MAWHORTER, JONATHAN MENENDEZ, DAVID W. MOODY, DANIELLE WILLIAMSON

Eleven emerging artists push back against prevailing ideas and definitions of digital art.  Undercurrents of information and meaning run through the exhibition, connecting themes of conservation, activism, and representation.

2013

THE DIGITAL ARTS AND NEW MEDIA MFA PROGRAM PRESENTS: ground (ctrl)

JOHN-PATRICK AYSON, DEREK FRANZ, JACOB GARBE, CATALINA GIRALDO, DAN HELLER, ANDREW SILLER, EVE WARNOCK, LAURA WRIGHT

The artists invite the viewer to redefine the meanings of “digital arts” and “new media” through hybridized video installations, interactive experiences, and improvisational performances that examine the social impact of new media on our lives.

Above: Catalina Giraldo’s Verde Oscuro.

Background: Laura Wright’s Radidio.

Above: Emily Martinez’s On (Collective) Memory, Light, and Vision (Working Title).

Background: james b. pollack’s be there.

2012

THE DIGITAL ARTS AND NEW MEDIA MFA PROGRAM PRESENTS: I’VE GOT SOMETHING ON YOUR MIND

DUNCAN BOWSMAN, DANIEL CHRISTOPHER, JESSE FULTON, SABRINA HABEL, HEATHER LEE LOGAS, EMILY MARTINEZ, NATALIE MCKEEVER, ALEXEI OTHENIN-GIRARD, HELEN HYUN-KYUNG PARK, JAMES B. POLLACK, JOLIE RUELLE

Entitled, I’VE GOT SOMETHING ON YOUR MIND. presents the work of eleven MFA candidates who employ advanced technologies for creative potential. Through storytelling about places, times and players, these artists experiment with digital media to produce unforeseen, imaginative outcomes.