Selected Projects Created by my University of Southern California Students
The projects on this page are original works created by USC students for the USC's Visions & Voices events that I have produced, as well as for assignments in my cinematic installation class.
USC Visions and Voices Events
Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" Re-animated (2019)
Nearly 2 years in the making, Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" Re-animated involved 20 USC faculty and 6 Library staff, 170 USC students and alumni from all six of USC prestigious art schools–Cinematic Arts, Roski Art + Design, Kaufman Dance, Thornton Music, Dramatic Arts, and Architecture. Digital projection mapping transformed USC's Doheny Library façade into a vibrant, electronic palette for re-telling Mary Shelley’s classic story.
Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' Re-animated. (53:45, 2019)
Documentation of live event at USC Doheny Library. Editor: Ana Carolina Estarita
Documentation of live event at USC Doheny Library. Editor: Ana Carolina Estarita
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Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' Re-animated Sizzle reel. Editor: Ana Carolina Estarita.
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Behind the Scenes of Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' Re-animated. Editor: Ana Carolina Estarita.
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Wonderland Unbound (2014)
In 2014, USC Libraries invited Hench-DADA MFA students to create animation for the V&V event, Wonderland Unbound, celebrating the 150th anniversary of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Students were inspired by the illustrations, artworks, and manuscripts on display at the Cassady Lewis Carroll Special Collection at Doheny Library. Their vibrant and playful animations explored a variety of scenes, themes, and characters from the book. The animations were projected on the facade of the Library to the delight of a huge crowd.
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USC's Wonderland Unbound (2014) Sizzle reel
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PiKA PiKA! (2011)
In 2011, we invited the Japanese artist team of Kazue Monno and Takeshi Nagata, known as TOCHKA, to guide more than 300 participants to “paint” pictures with flash lights and create colorful, playful animations.
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Cinematic and Media-based Installation Class 2012 - 2024
Cinematic and media-based installation art takes place at the intersection of installation, cinema, sculpture, performance, and technology. CTXA 575 is a USC School of Cinematic Arts production class investigating multi-disciplinary cinematic installation art.
In 2012, I designed and introduced CTXA 575 (aka CTAN 592/CTAN 599), just as the concept of projection mapping was beginning to gain a presence as an art activist tool. The software was new and very DIY. Affordable, portable, battery-operated pocket projectors were starting to appear in the retail market. I bought six for my class and began to assign the Pop-Up/Site-Specific project. Students were/are invited to choose an interesting location on the USC campus, research it's history and purpose, and discover unknown, hidden, or invisible events about USC's past and its controversial figures. They create a video responding to their research and projection map directly onto the site/architecture. In past semesters, the class has created site-specific installations in a variety of public and private off-campus locations, including the Clockshop Gallery at the LA River, USC Wrigley Institute on Catalina Island, Old Town Pasadena, the Armory Center for the Arts, a vacant retail store, the Lower Arroyo hiking trail, a hair salon in DTLA, and Doheny Memorial Library on campus. Occasionally, projects require students to wear costumes and perform, extending into performance art.
Another key 575 assignment is the Cinematic Object + Alternative Screen project in which students must build a sculpture or select a found object and embed a video flatscreen or project video content onto it's surface, creating a hybrid artwork.
The Immersive Environment project is a sensory transformation of an interior space utilizing floor to ceiling video projections, sonic art, as well as scents, tastes, and tactile stimuli. Locations include The Grand LA and the Vortex 360' Dome, both in Downtown LA, the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, and the USC Kaufman School of Dance theater.
In 2012, I designed and introduced CTXA 575 (aka CTAN 592/CTAN 599), just as the concept of projection mapping was beginning to gain a presence as an art activist tool. The software was new and very DIY. Affordable, portable, battery-operated pocket projectors were starting to appear in the retail market. I bought six for my class and began to assign the Pop-Up/Site-Specific project. Students were/are invited to choose an interesting location on the USC campus, research it's history and purpose, and discover unknown, hidden, or invisible events about USC's past and its controversial figures. They create a video responding to their research and projection map directly onto the site/architecture. In past semesters, the class has created site-specific installations in a variety of public and private off-campus locations, including the Clockshop Gallery at the LA River, USC Wrigley Institute on Catalina Island, Old Town Pasadena, the Armory Center for the Arts, a vacant retail store, the Lower Arroyo hiking trail, a hair salon in DTLA, and Doheny Memorial Library on campus. Occasionally, projects require students to wear costumes and perform, extending into performance art.
Another key 575 assignment is the Cinematic Object + Alternative Screen project in which students must build a sculpture or select a found object and embed a video flatscreen or project video content onto it's surface, creating a hybrid artwork.
The Immersive Environment project is a sensory transformation of an interior space utilizing floor to ceiling video projections, sonic art, as well as scents, tastes, and tactile stimuli. Locations include The Grand LA and the Vortex 360' Dome, both in Downtown LA, the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, and the USC Kaufman School of Dance theater.
Pop-Up / Site-Specific Projects
Cinematic Fountain (2024) - Christopher Bowles
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"This fountain shares a wall (directly behind it) with the USC Cinematic Arts Library. I wondered, if we were to tap directly into the cinematic library instead of the plumbing, what would the fountain produce? The most exciting part was editing and synchronizing the four videos -- not just with each other and the space, especially the diver splashing into the pool below." -Christopher Bowles
Sources were pulled from three Busby Berkeley films: "Footlight Parade" (1933), "Dames" (1934), and "Varsity Show" (1937). |
Sun. Moon. Tide. (2022) - Jessica Bellamy
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Projection on submersible, USC Wrigley Institute, Catalina Island.
Documentation of site-specific, alternative screen. Maps depicting the weather patterns around the U.S. and moon cycles are the elements animated to reference the passage of time and speculative futures considering climate change, warming ocean's receding coastlines, and rising tides. A daily ritual of collecting date to represent gradual shifts. |
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Adventures in Dohenyland (2015)
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Doheny Library, USC.
Site-specific video projections and installations inspired Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll. 2015 Final Projects in CTAN 592. Two students, Sara Fenton and Genevieve Parkes, placed 1st and 3rd respectively in the Library's 2016 Wonderland Awards. CLICK HERE for THE WONDERLAND AWARDS DOCUMENTATION |
Peep (2012) - Group project
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The class participated in a group exhibition presented by NewTown called "The Hugely Tiny Festival" in a vacant, high-end retail store at 455 S. Lake St #102, Pasadena, CA. "A presentation of small things with big ideas fueling them...micro paintings, mini sculptures and tiny artwork."
The nine students created their own site-specific videos, visible through the peep holes in the dressing room doors. In keeping with the tiny theme of the show, the videos played on miniature flatscreens directly behind each hole. They revealed invisible or hidden behaviors that students speculated might take place in the privacy of a dressing room. Viewers interacted by crouching down to "peep" into the room to observe a shoplifter, a woman removing her hijab, a person cross-dressing and an eye staring right back at them. Students: Laura Cechanowicz, Melanie D’Andrea, Drew Diamond, Christina Granados, Mahin Ibrahim, Amy Lee Ketchum, Julius Robins, Margaret To and, Simon Wiscombe |
"Peep" documentation starts at 4:34 - 5:16.
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Made possible by grants from the City of Pasadena Cultural Affairs Division and The Pasadena Arts and Culture Commission; Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the support of NewTown members.
Cinematic Objects + Alternative Screens
Overwhelmed (2018) - Kaley Cho
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Cinematic objects. USC Firehouse Gallery.
Materials: paper, 2 projectors, speakers, recorded audio, and real-time, generative animation content using Touch Designer. Overwhelmed is a collection of cinematic objects in the shape of drug capsules. |
Proto-Floto (2017) - Group project
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Cinematic object + alt screen + performance. Old Town Pasadena; Armory Center for the Arts Included in the "Tote Your Float: A deconstructed parade of wearable floats" presented by NewTown and made possible by a grant from Pasadena Cultural Affairs during Spring 2017 ArtNight Pasadena. 10’L x 6.5’H x 4.5’W. (15 minutes, looped) PVC pipes, fabric, plastic hoops, balloons, original footage, projectors, speakers Proto-Floto is a primordial protozoan blob that transports life beyond our universe. It is a flowing, cilia-covered, single-cellular organism that functions as a literal and metaphoric wormhole, burrowing a passageway and shortcut through the space-time continuum. Proto-Floto is a fickle and “flam-buoyant” creature, with vibrant colors and imagery shifting on its outer “skin,” much like a chameleon. The microscopic organisms magnified on its surface were collected from Lower Arroyo Park in Pasadena. Proto-Floto has been observed “swallowing” human passengers through its mouth-like tunnel entrance, only to release them after a kaleidoscopic, time and space-warping excursion. Those who have entered and experienced the Proto-Floto wormhole emerge in a state of euphoric bliss, caused by an escape from contemporary conflicts on Earth. Through an "astro-biological research experiment" that went radically off-course, students at the USC School of Cinematic Arts and Roski School of Fine Arts are in the process of examining its properties. Click to watch videos: Content video Documentation video and timelapse construction |
Click to watch documentation of all of the floats:
NewTown Arts' Documentation of "Tote Your Float: A deconstructed parade of wearable floats" @Art Night Pasadena |
Clothesline (2014) - Yo-Yo Lin
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Clothesline, underwear, 1 channel.
USC School of Cinematic Arts courtyard. Projection mapping on alternative screen. |
Nuclear Family (2013) - Reginald Espiritu, Nico Daskalakis, Anshul Pendse
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2 channel video installation, USC SCA Gallery
Projection mapping alternative screen (dinner plates.) Prompts: irony and war. |
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Immersive Environments
Concrete Oasis (2024) - Group project
575 students created an immersive, interactive installation "Concrete Oasis" on April 28th and May 2nd, 2024. Our site was The Grand LA, across the street from the iconic Walt Disney Concert Hall, and designed by the same architect, Frank Gehry. With their four collaborative projections, the students transformed the open, unoccupied, ground floor retail space into a tranquil symphony of light, sound, and motion. Seen in the documentation video below are two of the four works:
"Dreamscape" (By Quinn Liu & Zifei Zhang). "Dreamscape" invites viewers to engage with the urban landscape in a tactile and imaginative way. By touching flowers connected to a MIDI controller, the audience becomes co-creators of a generative light projection. This projection, a surrealistic collage of the city, reflects the ever-evolving nature of urban growth.
"Hometown Crossroads" (By Shea Noland & Dulce Mejía Morales). Using archival footage from their hometowns of Hawaii and El Salvador, co-creators Noland and Morales generated a Rorschach image within a corner of The Grand LA to evoke a sense of nostalgia. The result is a literal and allegorical crossroads created with two synchronized and mirrored video projections.
"Koncrete Kaleidoscope" (By Christopher Bowles & Nitesh Sridhar). Inspired by the idea of a relaxing beach oasis in the heart of Downtown LA, Koncrete Kaleidoscope is a live, face-tracking and image capture experience in which one participant plays in the sandbox while another lays down on a beach towel. Projected images of sunny faces and sandy decorations mix and mingle like a living wallpaper pattern in a secluded corner of The Grand LA space.
"Rewilding" (By Lillian Lin and Ian Wang) "imagines a state of harmony between concrete and jungle, panning through an unfinished retail space at the Frank Gehry-designed The Grand LA. As each 360' loop ends and restarts, the space slowly transforms into a rainforest, evoking a future present when nature delicately reclaims an industrialized city."
Students created a companion program guide and website.
"Dreamscape" (By Quinn Liu & Zifei Zhang). "Dreamscape" invites viewers to engage with the urban landscape in a tactile and imaginative way. By touching flowers connected to a MIDI controller, the audience becomes co-creators of a generative light projection. This projection, a surrealistic collage of the city, reflects the ever-evolving nature of urban growth.
"Hometown Crossroads" (By Shea Noland & Dulce Mejía Morales). Using archival footage from their hometowns of Hawaii and El Salvador, co-creators Noland and Morales generated a Rorschach image within a corner of The Grand LA to evoke a sense of nostalgia. The result is a literal and allegorical crossroads created with two synchronized and mirrored video projections.
"Koncrete Kaleidoscope" (By Christopher Bowles & Nitesh Sridhar). Inspired by the idea of a relaxing beach oasis in the heart of Downtown LA, Koncrete Kaleidoscope is a live, face-tracking and image capture experience in which one participant plays in the sandbox while another lays down on a beach towel. Projected images of sunny faces and sandy decorations mix and mingle like a living wallpaper pattern in a secluded corner of The Grand LA space.
"Rewilding" (By Lillian Lin and Ian Wang) "imagines a state of harmony between concrete and jungle, panning through an unfinished retail space at the Frank Gehry-designed The Grand LA. As each 360' loop ends and restarts, the space slowly transforms into a rainforest, evoking a future present when nature delicately reclaims an industrialized city."
Students created a companion program guide and website.
Ironic 2050 (2023) - Iris Ni Sang, Shiqi Hu, Shengwei Zhou
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4 projectors on 4 walls, speakers. USC classroom.
The prompt for this Immersive Environment assignment was "ironic 2050." Students created the video content by prompting Chat-GPT to create a written list of visual descriptions for "ironic 2050." Each Chat-GPT image description was then entered into DALL.E., which generated multiple still images. The students edited these images into videos for the installation. The audio tracks were based on Chap-GPT's suggestions for "ironic 2050" sound effects and dialogue. |
Integration (2018) - Kaley Cho
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PERFORMANCES@PAM:SOUNDSCAPE
USC Pacific Asia Museum. 2 channels, microphone inside the piano. "Integration" was a site-specific, interactive, immersive installation inspired by the PAM exhibition “Winds from Fusang: Mexico and China in the Twentieth Century." The projected animation was driven by the sound frequency of the piano. Viewers were encouraged to play the piano to splatter bright colors and abstract shapes onto the scrolling 3D mountain background. |
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Dilution (2017) – by Evan Tedlock, Zoey Lin, Ana Carolina Estarita Guerrero
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USC SCA Gallery
3 channels, 3 screens, coffee, coffee machine, cups "This immersive installation stimulates all the senses as it comments on the ubiquitous dilution of South American culture. The floor is covered with coffee grounds which produces an overwhelming aroma and textural feeling underfoot. Viewers are encouraged to pour themselves a cup of coffee which becomes more diluted throughout the exhibition as the grounds are never changed. As time passes, the defined shape in the center of the room starts to smudge as the grounds are tracked outside of the installation and gallery. The coffee is no longer part of a contained piece, traveling, it is dispersed globally, diluted much like the culture where this commodity originates." - Evan Tedlock, Ana Carolina Estarita Guerrero, and Zoey Lin. |
Exospace (2013) - Lauren Fenton, Karl Baumann, and Nicolette Daskalakis
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Exospace Full dome projection content (3:45)
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Full-dome 180' projection
The Vortex Dome, Los Angeles "Exospace' is an experimental full-dome projection piece that plays with the surreal slippages between psychological and physical space. The film projects internal states of fantasy and fear onto the external world of the audience. Exploring issues of anxiety and alienation, the piece moves from dreamlike domestic spaces to imaginary alien landscapes." - Karl Baumann, Ph.D USC Media Arts and Practice Dome screenings: -FILE - Electronic Language International Festival 2019, São Paulo, Brazil. -State of the Arts: Future of Full Dome Festival, 12/12/2013, LA, CA |
Simius Tenebris Arroyae aka the Arroyo Ape (2013) - Group project
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An exhibition from the archives of the Historical Institute for Para-temporal Phenomena and Observations (H.I.P.P.O.)
Lower Arroyo Park, Pasadena. Three site-specific video installations and a performance in “Re-Imagining the Arroyo,” a group exhibition presented by NewTown. "This USC-sponsored exhibition investigates the mysterious 1973 disappearance of former HIPPO director, Dr. Leo Tempus II. Archival footage and documents associated with his disappearance, his time-traveling device, and rare footage of the elusive, ape-like creature, Simius Tenebris Arroyae, common name Arroyo Ape, were on display in video viewing boxes throughout Lower Arroyo Seco Park, Pasadena, California. The park is the only known natural habitat of the Arroyo Ape. The footage was acquired from the Historical Institute For Para-Temporal Phenomena And Observations (HIPPO) in conjunction with the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, and Lisa Mann's master class in Cinematic and Media-based Installations." |
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The USC HIPPO research team
Karl Baumann Reginald Espiritu Lauren Fenton Alex Gabrielli Nicolette Daskalakis Quyen Nguyen Le Savannah Lejeune-Stodieck Sara Mardam-Bey George Mylonas Anshul Pendse Chang Zhan |
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H.I.P.P.O. documentation begins at 9:03 mins.