The Media Arts + Practice program presents new and recent media projects by three doctoral candidates: Laura Cechanowicz, Behnaz Farahi and Juri Hwang. Spanning interactive architecture, participatory filmmaking and experiments in the relationship between sound and image, the show embodies the interdisciplinary nature of the iMAP program. Taken together, these works explore the body, space, architecture and sound, asking how we perceive, know and understand the world around us. Please join us for the opening reception, or visit the gallery between Saturday, November 23 and Tuesday, November 26.

Completed and Ongoing Works | Laura Cechanowicz

Laura Cechanowicz's work features the recently completed website InteractingWithAutism.com, as well as excerpts from Silent Secrets: The Body Language of the Confessor and The Body Remembers. These documentary works are inspired by neuroscience and participatory filmmaking practices, and they cross media boundaries, delving into the concepts of personal identity and history, nonverbal communication, and the embodied mind.    

Living Wall | Behnaz Farahi

How might we imagine a space that can develop an understanding of its users through their movements and respond accordingly? How might we develop an interactive 3D environment that goes beyond mere narrative to actual choreographies of space? This installation is an attempt to address these questions through the design of an interactive kinetic wall. The central focus of the project is the relationship among materials, form and interactive systems of control.  It is an attempt to explore how simple elements in our surroundings can change their physical configuration as we interact with them. The installation will consist of ‘skin’ (stretchable fabric), ‘bones’ (aluminum tubes), and ‘muscles’ (shape memory alloys) augmented with a ‘brain’ (Arduino micro-controller) that mimic the behavior of the human body itself. 

Samplings | Juri Hwang

Samplings is an examination of a point of perception through sound and visuals. It is comprised of a series of videos shot in a fixed frame while the sound was recorded simultaneously in the same location. The intentional misalignment between visuals and sound questions our habitual ways of relating sound and images and in this way destabilizes our perspective of space.

 

Contact Information

Name: Sonia Seetharaman
Email: sseetharaman@cinema.usc.edu
Phone: 213.821.5860