previous projects

Oyster shells, valued for their durability and insulation in coastal architecture, pose challenges due to their irregular shapes and labor-intensive installation. This project reimagines these shells within a knitted textile framework, blending material studies with parametric design.

This project will work to interrogate relationships between cultural heritage, memory, and decaying ecologies in the Fayyoum Oasis, a site located 60 km southwest of Cairo. The anticipated outcome of this research is to produce a large appliqué textile as a “critical cartographic object,” exploring how Fayyoum’s landscape has been represented and exploited since Pharaonic times; with the aim of opening up new methodological potentials in spatial and creative practice.

Rather than allowing these ruins to become static relics, the research investigates how arts and culture can transform them into dynamic public spaces that foster artistic expression, community participation, and urban resilience. Through site-specific interventions, the study examines how Mesoamerican spatial and material legacies can be repositioned within the 21st-century city, ensuring their relevance in modern urban life.

Deaf individuals often encounter acoustical barriers in architecture. This project integrates Deaf cultural insights, computational simulations, and robotic fabrication to design a 3D-printed acoustic installation.

By creating a mental health first aid kit, we aim to give the individual the tools to deal with daily stress and anxiety, and prevent major episodes before they happen. This physical kit will provide easy and accessible methods of reducing stress and calming anxiety.

BOUND by much, an original performance-turned-film, is premiering at The Michigan Theatre! This project - built from anonymously submitted monologues, music, poetry, and dance - gives voice to unspoken narratives within the U-M community, exploring identity, difference, and social justice.

Exploring the impact of vocal music and illustrating how various texts and melodic lines can be expressed through different artistic disciplines. My research relies on surveys and after-concert discussions that will help me understand how the human sensorium is influenced not only by the performance of the music but also by dance, visual art, and community singing with a chamber orchestra.

The U-M Star Wars Fan Club is looking to construct their own lightsaber - a replica of Count Dooku's dueling saber from Episodes II and III. We intend to design and build it from the ground up, including the controls, lights, sound fonts, and special effects.

Inclusive drag show that celebrates the LGBTQ+ community and supports the Jim Toy Community Center. Featuring performances by both professional and amateur drag queens, the show will create a vibrant, welcoming space for self-expression and entertainment.

In Flow explores the interconnectivity of violence through water, scent, poems, and sound. The large-scale video projection of flowing water, the fountain installation, and ceramic sculptures that transmit the voice of a massacre survivor, immerse the audience in the unseen and unspoken. The exhibition calls attention to fragmented familial memories of US imperialist violence in South Korea that are submerged and silenced in water.

Gridscape is a modular pavilion that merges architecture, robotics, performance art, and interactive design. This project explores how computationally designed spaces can foster social interaction, serving as a dynamic platform for community engagement, dance performances, and user-driven customization.

Consuming Ourselves to Death is a multimedia video-sculpture installation interrogating the cyclical relationship between collective myth-making, identity formation, and the hyper-individualism that has arisen from these processes in the Digital Age.

A celebration of MEMCO's history in Ann Arbor and its twentieth anniversary. Activities include a magazine, an album, and a special speaker panel featuring MEMCO alumni from the past two decades who are still involved in the music industry.

An audio visual installation composed of discrete creative computing experiments connected by projected visuals which pass information between each other.

My project is a puffer jacket out of handmade pillows. Each pillow represents an aspect of a U-M student's childhood, based on a survey sent out. Once the project is completed, I would like to do public pop-up displays of the piece as well as a collection of testimonies from some of the people who completed the survey.

"Nova's Reality" will be a a multidisciplinary, cinematic, XR experience that takes us into an alternate reality through the eyes and sounds of electronic jazz musician and technologist Nova Zaii, a graduate of U-M who invented (and later patented) the "Nova Portals" instrument.

Paper Street is a coming of age graphic novel and multimedia animated teaser which follows Josie Tang, a 13-year-old Chinese American girl and her summer break. Packed with laughs, heated arguments, and middle school drama, Josie's uneventful summer with her dysfunctional family takes an unexpected turn when she meets some super cool kids!

Childhood Dream is a project about hacking kid’s toys to control sounds and lights to create a multimedia music performance around the theme of playfulness and dreams. This project is an intersection of music, robotics, and electrical engineering. While the augmented toys will act as MIDI controllers, Childhood Dream will also incorporate different sensors, like distance, gyroscopic, guitar pickups, and accelerometers, to control additional parameters of the music and visuals.

This project reimagines Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder songs Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen and Um Mitternacht by blending classical vocal performance with soundscapes inspired by the cosmos. In collaboration with a mechanical engineering major, synthesized sounds will be created using spacecraft vibrations and satellite frequencies to evoke the acoustics of space. The recordings will explore themes of isolation, transcendence, and infinity, offering a unique fusion of art and science.

This exhibition explores the evolving relationship between media, entertainment, and the concept of competition in the digital age. Through multimedia art pieces, including sculpture, videography, and sound design, Enemies + Entities examines how media shapes our lives and challenges the idea that competition must breed division. By showcasing the coexistence of conflicting forces, the exhibition invites audiences to reflect on their relationship with media and question how “enemies” can foster growth, self-awareness, and mutual understanding.

Replanting a green wall and creating educational tools and a system for care, thus fostering a learning tool for children to grow as responsible caretakers, engage with biological scientific principles, and take part in shaping and designing their learning space.

How does learning and rewiring love shape who we become? milk and moons follows this question though a multi-sensory project. Through an immersive installation and a slice-of-life comic series, this project follows Lou and their friends — four college seniors navigating the twists and turns of queer identity, existentialism, and most importantly love. The installation brings Lou's world to life, combining tactile elements and an audio experience, immersing audiences in the emotional textures of their lives.

Our project is a textile material system that aims to develop pneumatically actuated knitted textiles creating varied haptic sensations by manipulating texture and pressure. The desired outcome is a material system capable of transforming everyday surfaces into interactive and mediated haptic environments. It is proposing to be a retro-fitting surface that transforms the mundane and benign studying and leisure environments into colorful and lively atmospheres of bodily expression. We are realizing this aim by building a 1/1 scale prototype in the form of an interactive installation.

Installation consisting of a series of ceramic pottery and supporting darkroom film photographs encompassing the histories of the borderlands between Chihuahua, Mexico, and Texas, U.S.A., intersecting social, cultural, and political factors and their importance of identity creation and definition in this area.

Dissecting Beauty will be a series of anatomical paintings and a life-sized body sculpture that draws attention to medical illustration and highlights the intertwined connection between science and art, proposing that one cannot exist without the other. While the internal body is typically viewed as disgusting, the hyper-realistic paintings will depict intricate compositions and visuals to invite viewers to challenge their own perception of beauty and disgust.

We are creating a display, similar to an arcade game (claw machine, pinball machine, etc), which contains a mechanical figure representing the user. There will be a controls section on the exterior of the box, with user interaction elements, such as buttons or sliders, representing healthy and unhealthy food choices. The figure in the box will react to these different options with different facial expressions or bodily reactions, providing an emotional response for the user to empathize with. These elements will come together to create a story which triggers the user to think about the effect of food on their mental and physical wellbeing.

Board game based on the game "Mafia" depicting the intricacies of gossip. Having detailed characters and close player interaction, Word of Mouth will mesh the flow of written narratives and the abilities of players to continue expanding the stories themselves to produce a quick and clever game focused on discovering who the "rumor mill" is. Using the dynamics of gameplay, my project will illustrate the positives of gossip by encouraging players to take part in it in order to reveal who is lying and using gossip negatively.

So Fetch! explores the dynamic interplay between slang, ornamentation, and architecture, positioning them as mediums of cultural identity and collective expression. Through immersive performances and scenographic experimentation, the project examines how language and technology reshape human connections and spatial experiences. By merging storytelling, digital media, and performance, the work proposes architecture as an active participant in cultural discourse, fostering engagement through hybrid digital-physical environments.

YENIKA Editorial is a new magazine on campus that spans roles from Fashion Design to Web Development to Event Planning, all united by a commitment to media representation and sustainability in fashion. We celebrate the beauty of diverse stories, from the joy of people of color falling in love through fashion to the transformative power of accessible fashion. Our mission is to be a beacon on campus where everyone can see themselves represented in ways they haven’t before, and to inspire participation from all, even those who may not initially see fashion as their passion.

Pilot Pals is an animated children's TV show for ages 3-5. It features an energetic team of cartoon animal aviators with mental or physical disabilities who harness these differences to support their community. Its main goal is to teach social-emotional regulation, a skill that often needs to be improved in children's programming.

One Team, One Heart: 35 Years Under the Sun is a free gallery exhibit celebrating 35 years of Michigan Solar Car history. Located in the Duderstadt Gallery on the University of Michigan North Campus, the exhibit tells the story of Michigan Solar Car including its founding, 10 National Championships, 17 cars, and over 30 competitions.

The Michigan Theme Park Engineering Group (TPEG) is dedicated to serving the University of Michigan community through creative and immersive projects. Each year, members design and build a themed experience from scratch, providing practical, hands-on experience in engineering and design. This fall, TPEG is hosting a horror movie-themed haunted house to help students destress during midterm season.

Love, Cam is a short film project, designed to explore the balance between intentional, yet reactive filmmaking. Love, Cam will be experimental and abstract in concept, lacking traditional scripted dialogue and a linear storyline. The premise follows two brothers embarking on a cross country roadtrip.

Project Sandcastle RTS is the WolverineSoft Studio’s semester-long game development project. Our project is a case study of two games, Starcraft for gameplay, a Real-Time-Strategy based game where you must build up and defend your base while attacking enemy bases, and Cult of the Lambs for artwork, which utilizes bill-boarded style graphics.

MEMCO (The Michigan Electronic Music Collective) is partnering with SMTD students to create a two-part interdisciplinary performance that blends dance, DJing, set design, and lighting design. MEMCO aims to integrate dance and design for an upcoming event in November organized in Detroit, preceded by a local showcase at SMTD Studio 1 on October 25.

This project will be an interactive film that builds on the FMV genre, utilizing new technology to give its message to the player. It will consist of a choose your own adventure film intermixed with a retro inspired third person adventure game. It will discuss themes of simulation theory, climate anxiety, and the lack of control we feel over our own future.

Channel Surfing combines live dance performance with film and video production. The theme of the piece centers around the artist’s anecdotal lyrics, hidden under a funky, dream-like aesthetic sound score.

Documentary that focuses on the topic of worker rights and wage theft issues, about 20 minutes in length. The central part of the video features three students who are working on “the wage theft project”, a collaboration with the Huron Valley Working Organizing and Research Center to survey Ann Arbor local restaurant staff on their wage condition and help workers learn about their rights under Michigan’s changing wage laws.

Sea++ is an immersive audio-visual experience hosted in the Davis Studio of the Moore Building on November 16 from 10 am to 8 pm. Within the space, a digital ocean fills the room, dotted with flickering CRT TVs and other relics of outdated technology.

The goal of the Art/Sci Residency Program is to encourage interdisciplinary learning and creative production by exposing students to life and work in an alternate discipline’s maker space. Professor Moldwin’s lab works on space weather (e.g. how the Sun influences the space environment of Earth/society) and magnetic sensor development.

Stitch It Together examines borders and walls through a methodology engaging textiles and network technologies. Through a speculative, multi-scalar approach, this thesis will look to translate making-based agency to the disruption of borders in the built environment.

Architectural project at the intersection of architecture and AI, aiming to reimagine Venice's future in response to climate change. It utilizes AI for complex data analysis, translating these insights into architectural designs that harmonize Venice's historic aesthetics with the future.

A free, public lecture/performance series hosted at Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago that highlights the work of artists who build and train original machine learning models as part of their creative practices.

This project combines audio and visuals to bring awareness to the intentionality and bias behind our everyday listening. Drawing from psychology, melded together with music and visual art, Noise (verb), showcases how sounds are only as important as we make them.

A creative journey that blends audiovisual interactive installations and performance art, crafting a multi-sensory exploration of the natural world. Guiding the project, I seamlessly integrate motion tracking technology, employing both acoustic and inertial tracking technologies for interactive design.

In this project, we intend to build an interactive installation to encourage community engagement and to gather information to analyse the participation conditions and their engagement preference. Our intent is to fashion a three installation cluster, allowing residents to collectively curate and manage their shared space.

Our project, "High-Five," aims to install interactive robotic hands across campus to engage students through simple, joyous gestures like fist bumps, high fives, victory signs, and playful games of rock-paper-scissors. Each robotic station will also feature a screen that displays supportive messages, creating an immersive experience that uplifts spirits, fosters a sense of community, and injects a dose of fun into the daily lives of students.

A musical written by current musical theatre seniors, CANVAS centers around Iro, a genius synesthetic, and his desire to pursue his artistic abilities within the suffocating walls of his academically rigorous institution.

Our project looks to design a sea wall facade system that can promote oyster growth at the base under water and sea grass at the top of the system. This living system can work to naturally fortify the seawall construction, while increasing the biodiversity of the hard coastline barrier.

The All In Your Head Project is a new four-movement work that explores the mental health care system, the neuroscience of depression, and the inner landscapes of the brain, using visual art, dance, and live jazz compositions. The project aims to flip the idea that mental illness is "all in your head," because this is exactly where we need to look: within the individual's unique neurophysiology, life experience, and environment.

Every Brilliant Thing is an interdisciplinary theatrical production that delves into themes of depression, resilience, and human connection, following the heartwarming narrative of a child compiling a list of "brilliant" things to support their struggling mother. Through a combination of live performance and streamed accessibility at the Duderstadt Video Center on March 15, the project aims to initiate vital conversations about mental illness, engaging audiences across campus and beyond.

UMGroove is a non-traditional percussion group on campus always looking to innovate and create in every possible way. With students from all different majors, we intend to use our collective knowledge to fuse together arts, engineering, music, and performance to create exciting, eccentric instruments!

"Unnatural Nature" is an immersive installation project blending sonification and interactive art to convey climate change data emotionally. Participants engage with touch-sensitive plants, shaping a unique musical performance and fostering a connection with the environment.

“Sifting” is a multisensory installation that consists of an eight-hour video performance work projected on a 10.5 foot wide 180-degree panoramic curved wall, two benches that have embedded sound. This project includes film, woodworking, physics, and sound while continuing my research around accessibility within gallery spaces.

The EMAIIL is a multidisciplinary research project in which I plan to collaborate with engineers, composers, and performing musicians to establish new areas of inquiry surrounding new musical compositions for custom-built electromagnetically actuated musical instruments and interfaces.

Chimera is an immersive movement-based sound-optics-focused performance installation, in collaboration with AAPI Performance Collective IS/Land, which will be premiered in Duderstadt Center Video Studio in April 2024.

Bare Display is proposed to be a 10-15 minute interactive audiovisual dance performance in the Brehm Technology Suite in the middle of April. Two dancers, outfitted in apparel embedded with mini IMU sensors, perform within human-size transparent exhibit displays.

“Blood Quantum” explores Native American perspectives on the colonial construct of Blood Quantum. This new body of work revolves around the creation of 20 color portraits and accompanying interviews with my Native American collaborators. The overarching goal is to shed light on the diverse ways tribes recognize their members, the adverse impact of Blood Quantum on tribal sovereignty, and its effects on individual tribal members.

“Massless” is a series of artworks investigating the intersection of scientific theorization and mysticism in how we process memories and emotions. We will construct several iterations of a headdress composed of lenses and mirrors that project the wearer’s eyes all around their head.

The grant's ultimate objective is to facilitate the production and implementation of a design system that will use information design to mitigate food waste at home, offering a twofold benefit of reducing landfill impacts as well as extending the shelf life of produce, particularly crucial for those experiencing food insecurity.

My BFA Senior Capstone Concert serves as a culmination of my time here at the University of Michigan. The production is in the form of a collaborative short film, self-choreographed dance solo, and group dance piece.

Fluidity currently takes the form of a perfume patch that can be applied to the skin for on-the-move users. This increases efficiency in scent application and duration for business casual middle class in the age range of 24-35.

My project, Living Loud, is a direct response to the rising anti-trans political movement in the United States. It is a multimedia project that will result in an educational short film and discussion guide.

My senior dance thesis project, titled "Pivot," is an immersive virtual reality exhibition designed as a sensorial walk-through experience, featuring three VR headsets for an up-close and engaging viewing encounter.

Project Quest and Project Multiply are WolverineSoft Studio’s semester-long game development projects. Project Multiply is a case study of Wargroove, a tactics-style game with an isometric camera. Project Quest is our first try making a narrative-driven game, it is going to be an RPG based off of games like Deltarune and Franken.

Ghost in My Kitchen is a collaborative project that marries visual arts and music, and explores the themes of death and the value of life both visually and lyrically. The primary directive of the project will be to create two fully produced music videos, promotional photography, album cover art, and cover art for various singles that enhance and provoke thoughts about what it means to be alive.

Future Creatures is a project envisioning the design of future speculative creatures based on sustainability and technological advancements. It involves creating artistic photographic portraits to portray the imagined appearances of these organisms, blending future tech with natural traits to explore potential future scenarios.

Controller-Free Point Cloud VR has evolved from our ongoing research within the Empathy in Point Clouds (EIPC) project. Our paramount objective is to heighten the project's accessibility and interactivity while transforming it into a seamless and cordless VR experience.

Pepper ghosts are small glass domes with a small video screen and a 45 degree angle transparent sheet inside the dome that projects the video into space and emulates an hologram.

Resonance/Repose is an interdisciplinary functional piece of art that uses design, sound, and physics to allow for viewer participation while resting and waiting within the gallery. This pair of benches will be placed in front of a new performance installation that will create the sound used in the benches.

This research project aims to investigate the shortcomings of architecture in meeting the needs of all workers, and to counter these failures through a range of modifiable workwear pieces that return bodily agency to the non-male worker.

DIYers in the audio engineering field have been making plate reverbs ever since their invention. We aim to create a plate reverb unit with flexible pickup positions via stepper motors, which (to our knowledge) has never been done before.

Witch Task is a productivity tool for teens and young adults that provides a gamified systematic approach to task management, helping in time management, organization, and prioritization. This app aims to help individuals stay on top of their responsibilities in both their personal and work lives through immersive storytelling.

Refugia Festival’s mission is to advocate for environmental conservation and preservation through the sense of sound. The two-day festival in April 2024 incorporates music performances, educational programming, and community service to create meaningful environmental change on a local level.

Iphis and Ianthe is a short film project based on the Greek myth of the same name that updates the story to reflect our present-day reality.

In collaboration with Professor Mark Moldwin and the University of Michigan’s Mag Lab, I created this dress inspired by the GPS outages caused by bounces in the Earth’s magnetic field from solar flares that the Mag Lab studies and measures.

This piece shows Earth with a scene of aurora borealis in the night sky, which I have always wanted to see, and a reflection of the Sun that is able to destroy our retinal tissues with its light emitting strength. I included copper wire, to apply my new knowledge that copper is an element using in many scientific instruments, and illuminated its shadow to create a focal point on the Sun.

Through my woven structure, I wanted to convey that magnetometers and the Northern Lights have a common connection through their interaction with Earth’s magnetic field and the phenomena driven by this field.

Week-long gathering at U-M with dance artists and creative technology specialists to explore Extended Reality/Virtual Reality (XR/VR) opportunities for communal improvisation and storytelling, in a decolonial and Indigenous/Settler context. Exploring notions of worlding, myth-making, and different knowledge structures in Anishinaabe, settler, disability culture and Desi storytelling in dance.

Art Installation at the MAK. The installation consists of two parts: A large-scale lightbox (10' x 10') that displays every image resulting from the current research conducted at the AR2IL lab and a large-scale model generated using results from the research on AI and architecture. The model, called "The Doghouse," is populated by three AIBO Robots.

An installation that consists of creating “alive sculptures” by 3d printing artificial intelligence generated objects with a combination of clay and mycelium along with artworks that use slime mold to intervene drawings and mind maps in order to think in an art practice that allows inter species collaboration.

A novel concrete fabrication process that uses pulses of compressed air to shape concrete; it does not require mechanical master molds, produces little waste, and is low cost. Conventional panel formwork has limited variation. Complex geometry and surface textures can be implemented into a mold, but each formwork needs to be made individually and is only for one specified configuration. With robotic exhalation, simple formwork can be used repeatedly, with formal variations controlled digitally and implemented in real-time.

Our thesis explores the potential of AI in streamlining city planning, design, and architecture. The chosen site for the project is Mariupol, Ukraine due to its urgent need for reconfiguration and design. The project will involve collaboration between architecture, urban design, AI, and socio-cultural studies The project acts as a prototype tool that can be used in other war-torn areas or areas lacking infrastructure.

A pairing of visual images of health anxiety behaviors, known as “checking behaviors,” with a musical composition recorded solely from sounds my body produces, allowing the audience to learn about my experience through image, but also, one may experience my story through the sound of my body. It is a horror film of sorts, as I excavate the brutality of the incessant prodding, poking, scratching, and violence one can inflict on oneself to understand oneself.

A time-based performative installation that will include an immersive installation/built landscape, a performance inside the installation, and a tactical questionnaire requiring spectators to ‘become performers’ while inside the installation. The project generates dialogues between place and self – probing polemical ideas about who belongs to a place and who a place belongs to.

An interactive audio-visual installation that explores the porous borders between spacial, ecological and social systems. The installation integrates the methods of data visualization, projection, Arduino sensors, and architectural structures developed from mycelium-based biocomposites.

An interdisciplinary stop-motion film/performance utilizing my skills as both a visual and performance artist to explore how my relationship to family has changed over time in relation to how my gender identity has also changed.

An art magazine compiled from submissions by students of all majors. Our aim is to deconstruct the typical magazine formalities and create a product more reflective of unfiltered expression. The pages themselves will take the form of collages unbound by margins and captions, instead free forming visual narratives between different artists’ work.

A science fiction visual novel game featuring multiple lesbian romance options and an engaging narrative created by StudioDiag, a UMich student-founded independent game development group.

A reimagining of Lewis Carroll’s novels Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass. This project creates a world that examines artificial intelligence inspired by other projects reimagining the role AI plays in society.

An installation that consists of an entropic sculpture, durational video projection and an audio soundscape using sentimental objects and places as unconventional metrics to grasp the incommensurable self. The final sculpture will be an altar created from an assemblage of objects cast into wax, which will then be burned and displayed partially melted. The altar’s remnants will be immersed in a projection documenting the sculpture’s deterioration and a soundscape, both designed to complicate the assumed linearity of time.

A video game that follows a very small band of misfit animals - once left on the side of the road - who come together to found a small, broken-down camp in the middle of a valley. Through character-to-character interactions and an emphasis on making the camp a more and more comfortable place for each other to live, their once meager camp eventually grows into a bustling community where hundreds of animals from all over the world come to live in the place that comes to be known as: “Camp Kaleo”.

An immersive audio-visual and interactive installation that explores the global issue of climate change. The first section immerses participants on the science of climate change with a sonification of six global climate datasets sourced from NASA's global climate change databases. The second part invites to interact with physical plants, shaping the future evolution of the data through motion capture and touch sensors, exploring the power we have to shape the world around us.

Project Drift is the WolverineSoft Studio’s semester-long game development project. Our project is a case study of Hyper Light Drifter, a 2D top down action adventure game. A multidisciplinary team of 30 students, which includes artists, programmers, designers, composers, producers, and marketers, collaborate to build a 30 minute game using Unity. At the end of the semester, the project will be released on itch.io and steam, and will be shown off at the EECS 494 student showcase and at IGDA (International Game Developers Association).

This project seeks to challenge the misconceptions regarding self expression, and freedom in art. We will explore creativity in two fields that embody self expression in an unstructured manner, but require intentionality and prehension in the fields of study. The musicians will be featured 'reading a painting', and will then perform a piece that inspires the creation of another painting.

A performance, meets radio drama, meets choose-your-own-adventure novel, meets call-in hotline. Using a vintage telephone switchboard and a series of cassette decks, a performer will live-patch an audio drama that unfolds based on the directions of a call-in participant. The narrative draws on ideas of obsessive re-imaginings of alternative choices that could have been made, and weren't.

An A/V project of original music and visual materials culminating in a string of live performances. Using MaxMSP, Ableton Live, and live instrumentation, performers will be immersed in a mass of semi-transparent scrim and hanging ropes, upon which videos and images are projected and manipulated in real time with the music.

A coming of age animated short film about two boys from opposite sides of the globe, who come together to hunt down a mythical, monstrous white wolf in the Northern American wild. The film is entirely without dialogue, and relies on sound and visuals to tell its story.

Will being immersed in what it takes to make your clothing change your relationship to what you buy and how you dispose of fashion? Harnessing the power of VR, follow the creation of a pair of jeans from a cotton farm to your closet. Using Design for Sustainable Behavior, I hope to create a nudge in clothing purchase habits.

A TV drama pilot produced by the FTVM 421 class following temporary manager Josh and the employees of the Jersey Shore restaurant, The Saltwater Summerhouse, as they navigate new positions, new leadership, and new romance. A tale of self-discovery and new beginnings, the Salthouse's beachy charm underscores Josh's struggle with his sexuality and the team's journey to stay unified in the face of change.

Buildings and clothing are two expressions of the same human need for shelter, housing and holding the body. We will be creating wearables that are able to adapt to the user by responding to emotional, kinetic, and physiological stimuli. These dynamic garments will operate in response to the human body using a combination of experimental materials such as biofilm and technological control components like Arduinos and 3D printed molds.

An animation project leveraging the narratives of Black women and femmes' experiences with harm, healing, and joy online collected in the CHI 2022 paper, Experiences of Harm, Healing, and Joy among Black Women and Femmes on Social Media.

A multidisciplinary research project with the goal of designing and building a new musical instrument. This research will infuse novel and creative engineering practices with the traditional craftsmanship and musicality involved in instrument design. The Hummellaphone exploits the principles of electromagnetism and mixed-signal processing to dynamically control the sustained vibration of metal tines via a custom haptic interface.

[Re]Wilding is an immersive multimedia installation/performance with 4 interactive spaces that each address themes of technology, community, self, and ecological crisis. Audience members will become immersed through character building, interactive music, dance, and meditation, and asked to engage in speculative exercises that pose questions about our collective future.

Across generations in history, how have been the narrative of Korean female immigrants’ aspirations transmitted into another generation, crossing the borders, from South Korea to the United States? This project will investigate the living narratives such as the dreams and endless daily failures of a liberal-captial society and upward mobility of two Korean American females - a mother and daughter - living in the United States.

A musical titled “Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon”, written by Kirsten Childs performed as a part of the University’s Black History Month Programming.

A production of the contemporary song cycle, Songs For a New World, by Jason Robert Brown.

A devised theater piece to go on show through Basement Arts which seeks to explore how the media influences how we think and feel and alters our perception while fundamentally changing the world we live in physically and socially.

An interdisciplinary work that incorporates projections and movement to explore the concept of the self. The animation will be a combination of rotoscoping and digital collage. The dancers will interact with animated versions of themselves on screens and images will be projected on their physical bodies.

Developing a prototype for a new large-scale art installation using laser-cut paper and video projection mapping inspired by the plant, Arabidopsis thaliana, described as the “lab rat among plants.” Students from Stamps and Bioscience will create a pilot study, or smaller-scale version, of what will eventually be a room-sized installation of plant forms cut from paper, lit using video projection from 5 projectors.

A (work in progress) installation about the mind during isolation, as represented through a Zoom meeting with myself. More specifically, four parts of myself, representative of a hypothetical Four Horsemen of Quarantine.

Blueprint Literary Magazine is a student-produced literary magazine at the U-M. We annually publish original writing and art from across the Ann Arbor community, including poetry, fiction, photography and art. Our mission at Blueprint is to promote artistic diversity and foster creative expression.

Engineering and architecture students in Michigan Seismic collaborate to design, analyze, and construct a balsa wood structure to compete in an international collegiate competition hosted by the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI). Along with a physical construction, the team must present an architectural rendering of the design and a 3D model in SAP2000.

A qualitative design research project on how to integrate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) topics into undergraduate engineering education at the University of Michigan and prototyping and developing an interactive card deck for engineering educators to better help them integrate DEI topics into their classes.

An experimental mini-opera in three acts, seeks to explore how collaboration between architecture, performance, and engineering can stimulate an understanding of systems in the built environment typically left unseen. To tell the story of hidden hygienic systems and their environmental impact, the project repositioned the residential bathrooms as a scenographic. In this scenario, plumbing pipes are reimagined as instruments, hardware as props, and wet walls are refashioned into sets.

A concert featuring works from six graduating seniors in the Dance department, each of whom are presenting a solo and a group piece.

This soft sculpture is a scale model replica of the sun facing side of the magnetosphere. This stuffed model mimics the way the Earth's magnetic field cushions the Earth from the solar wind, and the way it contracts and re-expands in response to pressure, similar to a pillow.

Using dreams recorded from the DREAM HOTLINE, the Dream Machine Archive is a vinyl pressing of immigrant and first generation dreams. Including DACA Dreamers, Immigrants from Mexico and first generation dreams.

PAT 413 students engage in legendary local music scene by composing, recording, and pressing Techno compositions.

In this narrative satire on mental health, Ellie and Chaim are college juniors with big plans for the future. But their aspirations might prove hollow as the disillusionment of growing up and discovering the true nature of the world around them sets in.

A game-like interface designed for urban designers, urban planners, or anyone interested in urbanism to make decisions about cities. Confidential testing and research is currently underway and will be shared as it develops.

A dance concert in which each student choreographer will present choreographic work that creates an escape from reality into a world of fantasy that is welcomed following the many struggles of the past few years.

A piece that combines experimental dance practices with endurance performance art, coupled with a garment, to explore the intersection of beauty and pain and the trauma of living with it. Each day of the performance, the garment will be destroyed and broken out of, and then repaired. I look to explore the ownership of one's beauty and the ways in which I can take control of the ways in which I create vulnerability on the body through performance and clothing.

A one woman experimental film about the loss of Niki’s father to suicide. Through a multimedia collage of 10 chapters, Disrupted navigates Niki’s coming-of-age while remembering and retelling her father’s story. Fighting against the romanticization and villainization of suicide, the piece aims to connect to the universal human experience and ideology that life is worth living.

A cinematic dance piece, which highlights the intersectionality of movement and poetry in order to reflect the human condition in a raw, genuine, heart-touching way. In this original piece, we will grapple with depression, anxiety and how that affects body image and distorted eating through the lens of a male and female relationship.

Pulitzer and Tony winning rock musical centering around a mother who struggles with bipolar disorder and the effects that managing her illness has on her family. Our production of Next to Normal intends to explore the story of a family struggling with mental illness and grief through the lens of the Asian American family experience.

A one-act horror play that weaves an uncomfortable and gruesome story of three young queer people wrestling with each other and their future in a not-too-distant world crumbling under a climate catastrophe. It is written and directed by two transgender U-M students.

An exploration of e-textiles as a flexible barrier and mediator in play and bonding between people. I'll be creating a 3x6ft double-sided interactive tapestry on rollers so it's an infinite flexible interface between the both sides. Using conductive embroidery there will be interactive elements linked to sound on both to facilitate collaborative composition and area's of alignment that provide new modes of bonding.

A public art installation that aims to bring awareness to mental health and bring individuals closer together. Two "banana phones" will be placed in public, each with a prompt assigned to it. One focused on positive responses and feedback, the other on personal struggles and tougher subjects. Recordings will be relayed back onto the phones in the second phase of the project.

Many parents with mobility-related disabilities have a limited ability to carry their child. This team is developing a novel device that allows parents to push their child from room to room, enabling more independence in their care of the child.

“Rave For One” will be housed in a box truck and transported to different areas near campus. This project will create a space to address the escapism of generation Z and millennials in a time of high stress, and make a productive space to both escape into and reflect on our own wonderment through the live arts. The space will be a colorful, vibrant, psychedelic dreamworld inside with customized bead curtains, concert lights, projections, sensory experiences (kaleidoscopes and textured walls), EDM music and take-aways for the audience to create a visual and multi-sensual experience.

An architectural diorama with a number of miniature robots programmed to perform and interact as protagonists within this diorama. The robots will be engineered to have a variety of actions – some will inflate, emit light, vibrate or walk - reflecting and commenting on how we process and examine information as a society, particularly how we filter and respond to media.

A game design workshop series with high school students at the Neutral Zone, a youth-led organization in Ann Arbor, with the aim to teach participants how to work collaboratively using an integrative design process, and confidently discuss and recognize issues of power and discrimination in digital spaces using frameworks from Black feminist thought.

Experimental film and visual arts installation - a collaborative, improvisational, meditative approach to the soundtrack will heighten the aesthetic and conceptual impact of the film.

Enhancing live music shows by creating interactive audiovisuals. These visuals lie at the intersection of coding, design, and audio production. We have already incorporated these visuals into a show with renowned DJ Shigeto.

An installation of kinetic landscape sculptures responding to physiological data. Each sculpture processes data from a different bodily interaction with land by way of biosensing equipment such as electroencephalogram (EEG) and creative robotics.

A series of projects involving the electromagnetic excitation and sustaining of metallic strings for creating music and art: Polyphonic Guitar Sustainer, GuitArt, and String Synthesizer.

A larger-than-life sized robot (approximately 7' tall) to personify and personalize aspects of music that are often looked over, most specifically accompaniment. The robot will "sing" the part for electronics, giving a face to that part of the music, and turning the piece into a duet or conversation instead of maintaining the relationship of soloist and accompanist.

Rouge Park: DAS Initiative (diversity, accessibility, stewardship) is designing an interactive web-based map of the Detroit urban park Rouge Park featuring information on the history, stories, amenities, and events in the park, and designed in a way that is and readable to all users.

Erotic Ecologies is an interdisciplinary and multifaceted art project involving a hole and ecological study of soil, plant communities, and animal inhabitants in a 15 by 15 meter plot of oak-hickory ecosystem at Saginaw Forest. The project will accumulate in a body of work collected from the field, including recorded performances, photographs, and a field journal, and a series of paintings made in collaboration with the site that commemorate this process, unfolding relationship, and erotic discoveries.

A 2-person play about the famous abstract painter, Mark Rothko, and the testing of his artistic value system that is interrogated by his apprentice as they work on a commissioned work for the Four Seasons in the late '50s. The core experiential element we will be adding is tapping into the vibrations on the canvas as it's painted on throughout the play and using that feedback to adjust to music and lighting on the set.

“O Great Mullein!” is a choreographed performance depicting the life cycle of Great Mullein (verbascum thapsus) in which five performers interact with a soft sculpture of the plant. An electroacoustic score involving audio manipulation of the sounds of plant material, cello, vibraphone, and spoken word accompany the movement.

Lithorgan is a project to utilize cutting-edge digital fabrication technology in the design of a Hammond-style tonewheel organ. To achieve this, an organ with 3D printable tonewheels will be designed. This novel instrument will maintain the beautiful imperfections inherent in the electromechanical nature of the design, while adding customizability through the ability to interchange tonewheels with different, even experimental, waveforms.

Holey and Rotten emerges from an archive of 900 property appraisals in Richmond, VA that my family owned in the 1900s. Most were slums. With this archive, I want to make visible the role white property ownership played in urban renewal, aiding in the displacement of thousands of people in predominantly black neighborhoods. Using my particular connection to this past to consider new forms of reparative work, I propose an alternative to archival possession through an accessible, digital story map.

A sitcom about college students from various backgrounds. We will produce the first episode during the Fall semester, which will be about about 20 minutes long.

Fully immersed in the landscape of Lake Huron, this dance-art film acts as a moving painting intertwined with playful, poignant, and surreal stories about humans and the natural world. Domestic objects are introduced to sand and water, dancers embody multiple species, and the absurdity, beauty, and clash of human kind on Earth emerge through dancing metaphor.

Branch Out is a comedic-thriller centered around what happens when three African American students find themselves at a rambunctious house party where a police officer shows up to shut everything down. Aware of how the consequences for them may differ from their predominantly white peers, they diverge from the scene of the party and hide in the basement. The story concludes with a twist that is sure to leave every audience member speechless.

A short film about unethical food marketing toward communities of color and low income and food related disease. I am demonstrating these issues through the story of my grandmother who has lived in Chicago all her life and is currently suffering from Alzheimers which, in part, is from her diet.

Counterpoint Checker is a web-based app that would automatically grade counterpoint homework. (Species 1-5) This app will help to alleviate the workload of music theory teachers and professors as well as make the study of Western classical melodic and harmonic concepts more accessible.

Using LEDs and fiber optic fabric, Glowing Garments is an interactive outfit that reacts to sound and motion in real time. Intended for dancing, this mask and skirt promises to augment a user's performance.

This project is a bottom-up exploration of robotic drawing, algorithms, and design. A flexible interface for Fern to interact with other machines, sensors, observers, and artworks will be provided and will engage other artists and engineers to explore conceptual design algorithms and collaborative art pieces for Fern.

This project has embarked on creating large-scale repositories that contain annotated plans and house 3D models that would allow everyone to interrogate design based on high-quality datasets.

UnProductive Solutions is an artwork that will collectively imagine a technological world with a soul. UnProductiveSolutions will be structured as an umbrella “company” developing services that mimic, disrupt, and challenge current uses and assumptions associated with existing technologies.

Development of tools enabling methods of spatial investigation in design and presentation using immersive technologies. The tutorials, workflows, and app development enable conceptual extensions of foundational techniques for students in triangulation, drawing, and modeling.

DomusSol, is a new building standard that has the goal to combine affordability and sustainability for net-zero buildings in the US.

This project uses computational tools to analyze the jigs collected (1) by James Goodman in south-west Ireland during the 1860s and (2) by Stephen Grier in north-west Ireland during the 1880s. It further considers the question of regional differentiation, which is analogous to dialects of a language.

[Smile.], is a research project that seeks to make transparent artificial intelligence technologies. We ask in what ways and for whom are these algorithms (in-)accurate? Specifically, [Smile.] is an interactive installation that uses computer vision to measure human affect.

Superior’s Song is a musical piece derived entirely from data about Lake Superior. Using the programming language Python, I created a program that converts data from four measured environmental factors into coherent musical tracks.

Plastic Abodes will be a multimedia artwork drawing on dance, sculpture, and film to explore the permeable membrane between the natural and unnatural.

This project looks at ways architecture might play a role in restoration ecology and addresses the inequities caused by urban development in ground dwelling organisms through a collection of digital images of speculative habitats and the physical production of a “seed quilt” that will regraft native Michigan flora onto the landscape as a form of land art.

For our project we were given the theme Revolve. Our take on this was to each come up with a survey to pass to another group member to question them more about their interior life, to see what they ‘revolve’ around. Using those responses, we each attempted to exemplify the ideas and data through song.

We have chosen to interpret our theme, “Redistribute,” as taking parts of one object and spreading them around. By incorporating each constituent part into something new (in this case a resin cast object), not only do we return value to the object, but we also allow that value to exist in multiple forms to multiple people.

Based on the word “reform,” our project consists of five books, each one reformed by a corresponding member of our team. Each person was free to take their subproject whatever direction they chose, whether it be a sculpture, book folding, or other manipulation. We treated this project as a learning experience about the creative processes within others and that within ourselves.

The project takes materials that we would throw away, discard, or give little thought to after its purpose has been fulfilled and reforms them into a sort of sculpture.

Our presentation is the culmination of research and experimentation surrounding the use of water in our lives. Though it is such a valuable resource, our team began this process completely unaware of how much we used on a day-to-day basis. Thus, we decided to track our water usage with both normal and conservative habits.

We have created a digital rock collection. Because of the online format of this year, we chose to make a digital project so the audience could interact with each piece. There is a main slide showing the collection of all pieces, and from there, the viewer is able to select a rock to view in more detail, alongside its story.

An animation that changed art styles so that we could each display our different styles.

Word art to visually depict a subject that they thought was remarkable. Our approaches were somewhat varied: some of us used Photoshop or another software to overlay text on top of an image, while others opted to hand-draw or paint it. Each image is made out of our own words, either in the form of a story, or multiple key words/phrases. In this way, each image is composed of what makes it meaningful or significant to us.

A web comic depicting how intertwined everything that we are trying to reform is within our society. It functions like a choose your own adventure story, where the choices you make affect the outcome of the story line and the world around you. We made this with Google websites where we were able to use some of our programming skills and art skills to combine different things and get the website to work how we wanted it to.

A game functioning pretty much the same as a usual chess, except that we play it on the inner sides of a 7x7x7 cube. There are four blocks on four sides indicating in white and black in the game and the pieces cannot go through it. We have provided two options for players, an online option as well as an offline option, you can enjoy the game either with a friend beside you or playing online.

A short video that allows the audience to witness the day of strangers around the world using Google Street View. Based on the term “revolve”, the video highlights that even though an individual’s life may differ from another across the globe, we are more similar than different. We all breathe, eat, and walk under the same sky.

A website that showcases a compilation of parts of a story submitted by survey participants. Participants were asked to write one of five parts of the generic story structure without context of the other parts.

A multimedia piece that explores what happens to the things we build after their creators are gone; is what we make destroyed along with us, or do fragments of it remain? Based off of the ancient city of Pompeii, VIIXIX goes through four movements describing the city’s history- the morning of Mt. Vesuvius’ eruption, the few hours beforehand, the centuries after, and the city’s eventual rediscovery. Each section is presented alongside an array of light with colors representing the timbre of the sound. Written by Tate Fisher (CoE) as part of the Thompson Prize.

This project explores how scores and improvisation can support Information researchers’ work as results presentation methods. In a study that I conducted, I found that scores and improv can support researchers in engaging critical reflection about their positionalities and roles in shaping research outcomes. I plan to re-engage with participants to develop a score and improvisation-based presentation of our results, offering Information researchers insights about how these methods can help us share knowledge.

This immersive installation is an architectural structure surrounded by a labyrinth. There is an ambients core emitting from a directional speaker within this enclosure. The dimly lit interior is activated by a slowly pulsing light source and sculptural elements. There is an artist book in the room which contains poetry printed on white paper with white ink, the text is visible with the aid of a UV light affixed to the book’s stand.

TBD

What does it mean to be “at home”? Is it a place? A person? A thing? A feeling? Perhaps for BIPOC, the concept of “home” is wrapped in a multitude of emotions and history. HOME is a filmed cabaret that encourages BIPOC students at the U-M to describe the feeling of being ‘home’ to them through performative art. Through this, we hope to nurture a collaborative environment in which students from diverse races, ethnicities, and schools can use art to better understand what "home" means to them.

The Michigan Animation Club provides students with the skills and portfolio pieces to make them competitive in the entertainment industry. During the semester, our members will be participating in a group project that walks them through the full process of storyboarding, character design, key animation, background animation, and compositing.

A set of ‘smart’ analog interventions that address the rapidly evolving ‘smart city’. The project engages in the fields of architecture, design, art, IT, behavior science, and mechanical engineering. Are we free to choose what we put our energy into? Are we aware if and when our energy is being manipulated? How do we flex power over unseen energy harvesters?

Project Cloud is WolverineSoft Studio's semester-long project. Around 30 students from a variety of disciplines work together to create a video game using Unity. This project goes through several stages of iteration, where members are put on tight deadlines to complete work and receive feedback. At the end of the semester, the project will be shown off at the EECS 494 student showcase and at IGDA (International Game Developers Association) and will remain as a portfolio piece for all of those involved. This semester, we're doing a case study of the games Deep Rock Galactic and Dead Cells, where we'll recreate many of the games’ mechanics while coming up with our own theme and narrative.

The Blue Note Vocal Jazz Ensemble is putting together a thirty-minute film inspired by the 20-60s songbook movie musical period with the storyline told entirely through vocal jazz arrangements, incorporating a cappella, piano, bass, drums, narration, and dance. We desire to bring the show to audiences in the comfort of their own homes, to be enjoyed as a film presentation of a storyline connected by songs.

This collaborative, multi-media art project addresses environmental issues in Wyoming. A group of six artists, who all have an interest in creative engagement with the natural world, will find creative ways to experience, express, and spread awareness about the extensive coal mining and forest fires there.

This project will investigate the dissemination and reception of digitally rendered artwork created and disbursed within the context of COVID restrictions through a series of outreach surveys and interviews. The project will be self-reflexive, and the interviews and survey results will become a part of the original project itself.

Hopelessly Yellow is a blog and social media duo that includes relatable, thought-provoking articles, art, and music all composed by undergraduate U-M students. Rather than devoting content to one area of interest, such as fashion, food, or current events, contributors are instead able to explore a variety of territories. In a world with so much hopelessness, we want to highlight the Hopelessly Yellow times – the small moments that make you excited and grateful to be alive.

Skating Tree Town is a publication that chronicles Ann Arbor's rich skateboarding history and culture. Using visual design, photography, interviews, and historical archives, this book attempts to synthesize Ann Arbor skate culture and its community in a tangible way for skaters and readers to enjoy.

Project Mural Town is a virtual exhibition that features works from artists all around the world to present a space that promotes creativity and imagination without limitations or boundaries.

By designing, developing, and evaluating GDTs that support the design of three distinct types of craft, my dissertation investigates this novel framework for building design-aid tools.

I seek to shape an artistic process that will help me understand the experiences of and co-create a video piece with Turkers. Through this collaboration, it is my goal to amplify the human stories of crowdwork and explore the relationship between human labor and technological progress.

A collaboration with Griffin Candey (composer,) Drew Hosler (saxophone,) and a video artist from STAMPS to create a new multimedia work to be performed and recorded in the Duderstadt Center.

An artistic collaboration exchanging hand-written water letters (poems, dream diaries, and essays) will expand creating a zine, installations, and a call and response film as process-oriented work inviting the public to reflect on their own memories of water.

Emotional Creature tells the story of young girls around the world growing into their adolescence. It brings light to the struggles that teenage girls undergo. It strives to seek change and right the wrongs that have been imposed on young girls.

The Ann Arbor Public Wifi Collective addresses the growing disparity and urgency in internet access that has been exacerbated by the pandemic. Targeting lower income and disadvantaged areas, the project builds off of the existing local transit infrastructure to optimize and give new agency to a public service preparing for new use conditions.

My project involves inviting community members to critically engage in uncomfortable yet necessary dialogue about racial identity. I am outfitting an electioneering truck, inspired by those frequently seen during the Korean election season, as a platform to share narratives through voices of POC. Screens attached to the vehicle will broadcast a series of films called, Cascade Voices. I will invite the public to share experiences of marginalization or to respond to the questions posed in the films.

Fire Follies focuses on re-designing and re-constructing structures to be more forest fire resistant. We are interested in studying cases of building destruction through forest fires to develop new construction systems and techniques which can be more durable, resilient, and environmentally conscious.

We are battling Zoom isolation by creating a better way for students to communicate and interact in school. We began with giving students a study group in their class. Then connected students with the rest of their class via group chat. Now we want to create an app that facilitates more connection between students in this isolating time.

We Are Queens is a non-profit female empowerment organization committed to fostering a groundbreaking future through the arts. We are excited to continue growing, creating, and empowering via our next Music Video focused on raising awareness for mental health through the arts.

Leveraging speculative critical design to facilitate evidence-based policymaking to address climate change-induced food security vulnerabilities in Pakistan. An interactive website that translates research and projections about Pakistan's climate change-related food security vulnerabilities into local, visual and relatable future scenarios using speculative critical design methods.

Project Rogue is WolverineSoft Studio's semester-long project. This semester, a student team of around 25 programmers, designers, and musicians, are developing a game based on the post-apocalyptic rogue-like top-down shooter, "Nuclear Throne".

A film documenting the once vibrant local music scene of a small town in Southeast Michigan while investigating why it virtually disappeared.

Cheers, is an interdisciplinary group of students on campus who are fighting for digital accessibility for older adults. This team is creating a website extension that will transform the digital experience for older adults and will redesign Gmail and Zoom, making them applications that are more user-friendly and accessible.