In this day and age, people, especially students, gravitate towards visual imagery to gather information and inspiration. This transformation in the cultural climate has made us want to explore the modern-day ways in which libraries are used, and if this continues to involve the preservation of written materials. Our work aims to re-energize written text found within various literary works that have become increasingly overlooked upon the shelves of the university libraries as we shift into a digital age. We plan to approach this idea by curating words and phrases into a more abstract and visually relatable form.This project consists of two experimental processes. The first is the collection of words and phrases from random library books, and the systematic creation of a new text composition from these found segments. The process relies on the structural form of a book by methodically selecting words/phrases using an algorithm, which directs us to a specific line on a specific page within a text. The algorithm depends on the physical existence of pages in order to guide our selection of the words and phrases used. The second experimental process will be the translation of the written composition into a video counterpart. By taking words/phrases out of their original contexts, and compositing them into a visual network, we are able to explore the ways in which words and images have infinite possibilities of meaning. In this way we have found a new use for written materials, one that goes beyond an academic setting by placing words into a completely different medium. We plan to present the culmination of our translational experiment with a physical installation. The installation will be a closed and immersive environment, in a form similar to a photo booth, where a viewer sits inside to access the multi-channel display of the resulting visuals, audio, and text.

I have completed a series of 16 multimedia collages inspired by and in reference to Beethoven’s 16 string quartets. My project can be understood as a visual prose – a colloquial yet refined exploration of major themes such as layers of abstraction, data structure, and emotional processing. My work aims to respond to the popular concept of humans as high powered computational machines by emphasizing how computers simultaneously mimic and record human thought processes. I am inspired by the way these metaphors juxtapose human spontaneity, creativity, and emotion with the human tendency to build highly structured and explicitly organized environments. I have chosen Beethoven as my muse because of the expansive volume of existing literature on his life and work, in both English and German, and because of the deeply embedded cultural references and acquired connotations that surround his life and music. My ultimate problematic is to demonstrate the power of sets, collections, and standardized forms as indispensable aspects of creative innovation, and to apply these insights to a well-known and generally accessible body of classical literature.

I am a UW Senior studying 3D4M, a major that focuses on ceramics, glass, and sculpture. I often incorporate performed elements in my presentations. The piece I have selected for the UW Undergraduate Research Symposium is a sculpture I have constructed of steel, string, and illumination. This suspended form can be lowered and raised to create a translucent barrier between the participant and surrounding space. My main interest lies in exploring concepts of intimacy and vulnerability as it pertains to the body and the psyche. Deeply personal—almost autobiographical—I strive to present a careful consideration of my own sensitivity and fragility in the context of the complexities of relationships and communication. This piece, entitled Hatt, is a shade whose design is informed by the intricate layers of the underside of a mushroom top. String wrapped around a circular steel frame represent a division of space between public and private. It is both revealing and obscuring the light. Simultaneously, the shade delineates the intimate space inside.

My current exploration of glass involves originating digital model in computer aided design software to 3D print to cast in glass. Digital modeling and 3D printing, although very common in science and industry, is fairly new process for glass artists. My research is to investigate different digital processes and finding the manifestation of the digital process. To conduct the investigation I have made three series of sculptures. Each series investigate a different approach for generating form. For example, collecting image data to transform it into vectors to generate form; creating surfaces through computer algorithm that resemble ripples on water; conducting computational physics stimulation of membrane structures to generate voids inside sculpture forms. Each approach create a different narrative for meaning. For me, the combination of digital design and manufacturing and glass is essential because the forms I am interested in are generated by computer algorithm and the resulting glass takes on the characteristics the aesthetic unique to this process/method.

Can the fullness of conscious experience be communicated? Can one trace the diffuse paths of energy traversing through and beyond their perceptive faculties? In other words, can one render intelligible that which they cannot fully comprehend, and if not, of what value is the cultivation of mind? These questions are the fervent mysteries at the center of my research and artistic work investigating how our perception of depth orients us in the world. The depth I refer to is not simply distance between points in space, it is the depth of one's psychological appreciation that all phenomena is a confluence of interrelating entities that can be labelled neither subject nor object. In my research thus far, I am drawn to theories of “speculative realism", a branch of epistemology that attempts to construct less 'certain' theoretical frameworks by which to understand how organisms both human and nonhuman interact in nature. Steven Shaviro’s Discognition, for instance, compellingly argues a history of misplaced certainty in neuroscientific explanations of consciousness and the difficulty of communicating "qualia", or qualitative experience. He lays out a theory wherein experiential dimension is of indefinite depth, incommunicable at its core, and thus translatable only through a distance, requiring faith that one’s words can accurately convey the nuances of whatever experience unfolds before them. I endeavor with my art to express the notion that observation is, as Gilles Deleuze said, “a flow of flows”, a way of playing with delinitation of relations that may capture traces of the energetically-excessive phenomena of the world. My installation, a 3d-rendered video reflected by glass into a projection feedback circuit, is an attempt to visualize the barely visible, and under-appreciated, depth of perception. I've tried to craft a truly dynamic moving picture; one that radiates its energetic excess, beckoning the viewer to consider what complex dimensionality lay in the gulf between the grid lines superimposed by language (the threshold at which the descriptive accuracy about sensory content becomes too broad) and the unspeakable depths of phenomenological experience.

Emotions are typically only seen through facial cues, body language or other external factors to express a person's feeling. However, if there are no external cues, emotions are often internalized. Because of the potential for emotions to be internalized, thermography is a tool that’s noninvasive that can be used to read emotional responses according to a person’s body temperature shift. With the combination of utilizing 3D processes, these emotional responses can be visualized in a more spatially comprehensive language. The purpose of this project is to use thermographic and 3D processes to analyze subject’s emotional response to different genres of music.

We live in a time where information is presented to us at a fast pace from all directions. Content is circulated on the web at incredible speeds, with real time streaming and instant sharing capabilities; audiences are redefining their relationship with themselves, time, and the intangible world around them. This excess of data makes it increasingly difficult to process new information before the next event unfolds. Especially in occurrences of violence, there exists little to no time to fully deal with the aftermath before the next one is being broadcast and reduced to hashtags. While all of this seems daunting and even debilitating, I argue that at the same time, the high pace and volume of information is our way of concretizing personal and collective experiences. I draw heavily from George Bataille’s The Accursed Share and the work of Katherine Behar to explore what it means to exist in a constant flow of information. Visibility creates tangibility, and although the virtual sphere is oversaturated, the act of sharing, publishing, liking and commenting further establishes those experiences as real. As a way of making sense of data excess, I created an immersive art installation that attempts to confront this problem. For this project, I constructed a space that transforms user input from social media, specifically Twitter, into a visual and auditory experience. In a multichannel display, I use real-time tweets and trending topics that literally immerse the spectator in information. The goal of this experience is to juxtapose overwhelming amounts of data within an intimate setting, thereby recognizing the comfort and discomfort of excess.

This piece proposes the physical representation of a mental sanctuary. This is the intangible place we run to when we shut down to the world around us and find ourselves unreachable. The canvas is skin, while the staples act as sutures. The redundancy of the staples speak of a desperation to secure the internal space. The internal coloration proposes sanctuary, while the curvature of the ribs offers comfort. My interest is in revealing the structure of emotions and memory. My work discuss the shift between internal and external spaces while creating a language that explores the in-between: a headspace where logic and rational dialogue fall short. Through my work I aim to better grasp how we understand ourselves. What do our internal spaces look and feel like? Where would a memory hide? How can we experience something in the physical world that is so intangible? This cocoon proposes the anatomy of our internal safe-space. The piece is eight feet tall and opens out from the wall. The space inside is relatable to the human body. The structure has wooden ribs with canvas stretched around the exterior.

Much of my life has been characterized by a strained relationship with my family. For as long as I can remember, my parents were always incredibly strict. Because of this, I felt as though the older I got, the more distant our relationship became. In recent years this has changed and I like to spend time to think about my childhood and the impact it had on me. Now, when I think back to time spent with my family, I like to indulge in the moments I spent with them. Fortress will be a reinvention of when my parents and I made small forts together. The forts were made out of umbrellas and blankets. Although they were incredibly cramped, to me it felt much grander than it actually was, not only because I was small, but also because I was enchanted by the fact that I had made my own unique space. It was wonderful and exciting, but mostly it was warm and cozy and safe. By using metal and tissue paper, I will reconstruct the space that evokes these emotions. I invite viewers to experience this moment with me, and to enter a space that separates them from their surroundings. This will be achieved by creating domes made of gloss, paper mache tissue paper. Primary colors, yellow, red, and blue, and secondary colors, purple, green, and orange, are meant to evoke a sense of childishness. The outside light is meant to imitate the color that I remember seeing from when I was little, while the layering of the paper enhances the experience for the viewer and makes the space more complex. To understand the associations with color, space, and material, I have turned to psychological studies of color and emotion, and color theory.