Nel Alpysbayeva

A Common Burn

Plaster, MDF wood, 3D-printed PLA, leather

A Common Burn is a sculptural manifestation of archiving and tracing the lineage of personal and collective artifacts. In this work, the active remembrance of pressings and rough outlines of what-once-was comes from personal relationship with Nel's Kazakh background. By burning, pressing, probing into the essence of what makes a culture and stripping it into its core visual motifs, the work intertwines these feelings with some artifacts from her personal life.

How can one enclose the essence within the formal boundaries of archival preservation that usually come in the form of a book?

Kaku Ayumi Bergan

THE BEAUTY OF BEING ALONE

Procreate, Adobe Premier Pro, cardstock, vinyl sticker paper, random sticky notes, and silver ribbon.

Many people depend on the company of others for happiness and a good time when the most important love and care we could ever have comes from ourselves. Self-love and acceptance are vital despite living in a world where being alone is considered odd and unideal. This piece encapsulates a period in which I am alone, yet I am unafraid of it. The more I persist in my own company, the more I learn to love the small moments in life and how comfortable I feel in the silence of my mind. I continue to breach into the great unknown of loneliness, but in remembrance, I would like to leave the impression that I was perfectly happy within the cradles of myself. If I can find joy on my own, so can you.

Sunaina Bose

Balobhashay Kao (Eat Well)

Installation

Balobhashay Kao is more than a physical space; it's a vessel carrying the threads of my Bengali identity—language, culinary traditions, and familial warmth. As a first-generation American-born Bengali, navigating this cultural tapestry feels like a delicate balance between the known and the fear of not knowing. At this table, between favorite memories and objects I can’t quite place, I grapple with preserving a heritage that feels like a stranger.

In the ebb of time, my grandmother's dining room recollections blur, yet within that fading, there's a poignant realization. Despite the inevitable loss, hope emerges to safeguard and celebrate what persists. Balobhashay Kao is a sanctuary where I navigate the unfamiliar aspects of my Bengali heritage and forge a connection between past and present. The table becomes a bridge, traversing different realms of memory and aspiration - recognizing my cultural identity as an ever-evolving dynamic.

Viviana Castillo

Querida LAVANDA

Book 8x10 inch, Posters 12x18 inch, Lavender Oil

Querida LAVANDA (Dear Lavender) explores anxiety as an experience. It pushes the boundaries of traditional printmaking by delivering a multisensory experience through visuality and scent. This book explores the inner turmoil caused by cognitive distortions that cloud a mind that is always anxious and lavender's ability to act as a blanket of comfort in the darkest and most tumultuous of times. Consisting of textures made using permanent marker, lavender oil, and paper, it illustrates my personal struggle living with anxiety. The safety pins that bind the book together replicate the struggles of barely holding oneself together and highlights the impermanence of coping mechanisms.

The name, Querida LAVANDA, is an ode to the small bottle of lavender oil I always carry with me that my aunt sent to me from México. The title highlights the intergenerational, cultural, and familial intersections of my experience as a Mexican-American given our culture’s persisting taboos on mental health.

Bela Chauhan

doorways

door, projection, mixed media video collage, wood

doorways explores the complicated and nuanced nature of the feeling of being in between; embracing uncertainty and allowing yourself to be where you are without feeling like you should be anywhere else. With old media I construct a new present, one that pays homage to those who came before me and questions the doors they opened for me to walk through. Forever grateful.

What will you see behind the door? Walk through, open it, and find out.

www.belachauhan.com

Mae Chen 陳美成

6. ADDITIONAL WORK - Optional 拷貝

Video Installation

Dear ___

Perhaps the only way to overcome fear is to face it, so come over sometime, I could dress you up, pretend we're in love, and Let’s talk 'bout troubles until we have none.

Mae 陳.

someday in 2023, Los Angeles

Dan Chuang

Unfinished Memoirs

Digital applications, prints on paper, social media platform.

When would an artwork be considered finished?

The moment when you lift the last stroke; stitch-up the final thread; or perhaps...click on that “save as” button. One may also seek their creative destination in expression: art, in any form, was produced for the eventual intention to be experienced, making its audience the last component of completion.

This project is a mini catalog of 8 sculptural artworks from the past, photographed and redefined in the digital space of the media.

Navigating through the computer folders, I stumbled across the files of the past documented artworks. Registered as polished, yet never felt finished; as if a painting without a wall to hang on – ended up in the corner of my garage. Like memories, they came to me again, and were save as a new one. I wanted to record this encounter, for a moment it was complete again, for I am the audience to these past memories.

Chuyu Liu & Eun Seo Kang & Xinyi Dong

Neue Zuhanden

Installation, Mixed media

Hammer, Cinderblock, Eye.

Sound, Dust, The people.

Xinyi Dong

Dear, Grandpa,

Digital Media

this morning, before dawn, a deer stood in the mist outside my window. The fog was so thick and bright that the second deer nearby looked like an unfinished shadow of the first. You could color that shadow, call it 'the history of memories.' In our multifaceted world, gazing is a unique act: to look at something is to fill your entire being with it, even if just for a moment.

—paraphrased from On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous Novel by Ocean Vuong

Yanwen Bu & Xinyi Dong

Retrospectra

Digital Media

Memory... Is it nostalgia, a yearning to revisit the past, or a sense of rejection?

Taking the form of a virtual experience, Retrospectra guides players through a dimly lit world, facilitating a rediscovery of their past. This immersive journey allows everyone to briefly inhabit the created space, generating memories that possess both personal and universally relatable qualities. These memories manifest in diverse forms, ranging from grand and attention-grabbing to fragmented, vague, or intricately detailed.

Sidney Francis

Flip

Procreate, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere Pro

"Flip" is a short animation depicting a boy getting a bedtime story in the form of a flip-book. In this film, I wanted to try and highlight unconventional ways of storytelling that would serve as inspiration for the boy’s artwork as he grew older. Family is another theme I wanted to include and there were feelings of warmth and nostalgia that were present as I drafted the initial idea. I had fun depicting this during the flip-book segment of the animation as the boy sees his family in a very fun and fantastical fashion. The nostalgic feeling of seeing your parents as the greatest people on Earth is what drove this part of the short. Later, as an adult, the boy reflects on these fond memories which continue to drive his creative outlet as he works in his studio; something that helps me when I feel at my most creative.

J Ellery Gee

Photo GPT

Photography, AI images, projection

With the use of an AI imaging website and Photoshop AI generative fill, I created images of random people to project on styrofoam heads. Some of these images are AI pictures projected while other pictured projected are pictures of real people I took. Can you guess which is AI and which is not?

August Hattiangadi

Pretty Peggy

p5 JavaScript

Help Peggy get ready for her first day of school!

Because this was my first time coding in JavaScript, I wanted to make a game that emphasized narrative and character design. In many ways, Peggy reflects the way I felt about myself at her age (awkward, chubby, and ugly), but through the rose-colored lens of self-love and nostalgia that comes with time. I think we all wish we could go back in time and tell our smaller selves that it'll be okay. There are many endings for Peggy, but there are no bad endings.

Yugo Imanishi

SIMULACRA

Generative text algorithm

Information devours its own contents… information dissolves meaning and dissolves the social, in a sort of nebulous state dedicated not to a surplus of innovation, but, on the contrary, to total entropy…

— Jean Baudrillard

Modern media bombards viewers with fragmented information in bite-sized formats like infographics and short-form videos, using buzzwords and key phrases to showcase snippets of intricate topics. These are presented alongside memes, thirst-traps, advertisements, and other frivolous content creating a mess that further dilutes meaning and context. Original meaning is lost and the surface of information becomes more significant than its depth.

This program generates sentences live off of a dataset of news headlines, social media posts and comments. It mirrors the trend of modern media by generating sentences based on word patterns and probability, resulting in sentences that lack any context or meaning. Although its impact is minimal, viewers can insert their narrative into the dataset.

Mustafa Khan

“HYPNOSIS”

Digital Illustration

The demons that drum up your fears.

Rafael Larranaga

Embodied Consciousness

Synthetic hair, acrylic, hair clips

A posthuman mural of Los Angeles highlighting the interconnectedness of the county.

Kai Levey

VIVID DREAMS

Animation/Audio

Vivid dreams is a song I made about the feeling of dreaming and how It can weight it can have on the mind. I would like to create an animation to tell a story that correlates with the song. This project would be a fitting culmination of my career as an artist and as aspiring musician.

Harry Lowy

Bone Lamp

Lamp; Materials - Canvas, Painted 3D print, LED bulb. It's 45cm tall, 12cm in diameter, excluding cable.

The organic form of the Bone Lamp serves to juxtapose the geometric shapes that surround my everyday life, from my desk to the sidewalks we walk on. Using an optimization software called nTop, I simulated the weight of the lightbulb and cable resting on a cylinder. Using data from that simulation, I removed the parts of the cylinder that weren't absolutely necessary to hold up the bulb, leaving only the structurally essential skeleton that makes up the form of the Bone Lamp.

Aileen Oh

Seoul Market

Multimedia/Installation

"Seoul Market" weaves together personal introspection, cultural roots, and the mundane yet profound moments of everyday life. In the past year, I found myself grappling with a creative void and a lack of challenge in my artistic endeavors.

This project is representative of my personal journey of rediscovery and a celebration of cultural revival. Seoul Market is the name of my neighborhood Korean grocery store. Going there with my dad during the break was more than a routine; it was a poignant reminder of life during the days of pandemic and before college. It evoked a sense of home and sparked a newfound motivation.

In essence, "Seoul Market" is a heartfelt exploration of my roots, a visual and sensory journey through the very fabric of my hometown. It's a celebration of the real and the tangible, a love letter to the place that continues to inspire and resonate in my creative expression.

Hugo Adrian Marin

Padre, Soy Tu Princesa

Human hair, steel, artificial sinew, stone, wood

She dips her fingers in a glass cup of water from the kitchen. The room smells like flowers and chemicals. “Pasame una liga,” she tells me. I am watching my mother do my sister's hair, standing there, like a man in a beauty salon.

From the act of caring for it to the act of styling it, hair is a gendered performance. A performance that is done for yourself and for the viewer. The longer and the more threads on your crown, the more of a feminine asset it becomes. It requires more care and attention. You become a parent combing their daughter's hair. But, there’s a little boy who is grown now that wishes his hair had been touched as such.

Nahla Quazi

Desire

Unity, Procreate, Clip Studio Paint

Let's go on a date! You've been looking forward to this for so long...and as embarrassing as it is, it's your first in a while. You want to feel good. This time for sure, it'll be just like everyone says. You'll love her.

It's difficult to love and even more difficult to feel like you are giving that love. Through this game, I wanted to explore asexuality and it's isolating nature.

Miglė Railaitė

Meditation

Digital game, stainless steel controller

Meditation is an experience of a forever developing world without the possibility to quit, pause or restart, only the stainless steel handpan drum controller deteriorates with each iteration. The game, a world-building music engine, is inherently collaborative; each player builds upon the composition of the ones’ past, even without ever meeting them. The piece is a physical experience of a virtual space, the element of glitch further bridging virtual space with reality, breaking the game’s magic circle.

The handpan drum controller is used similarly to how the real instrument is played - by tapping the dents on the drum. The world is populated with various sculptures from the artist’s physical work, each playing a handpan drum note upon being spawned, creating a musical composition. The player navigates the world by tilting the handpan drum back and forth and gazing left and right, and interacting with the characters populating it.

Jatearra Ritchie

[I can hear your thoughts]

p5.js

[I can hear your thoughts], explores my personal journey with hearing aids and poetically gathers my reflections on identity. Using p5.js, I crafted an interactive canvas that unveils the internal parts of a hearing aid, metaphorically representing the complexities of my experience that I also open to take apart. The black canvas serves as an evocative space where, upon hovering over specific areas, text emerges, each one offering glimpses into my inner thoughts and experiences. The project remains intentionally open-ended, allowing for a continuous addition of text that resonates with evolving sentiments over time.

Samia Saad

Misguide to Gravity's Rainbow & Thomas R. Pynchon, Jr.

Book, Cardboard Box, Ink on Paper

Thomas Pynchon's 1973 novel, Gravity's Rainbow, is one of the most iconic and (some would say) greatest American novels ever written. Like any work with such status in the literary canon, it has inspired a tremendous amount of academic reader's guides, all promising to make sense of what is otherwise an incredibly confusing book. This "Misguide" is not meant to help parse the text, as traditional guides might. Instead, it aims to baffle the Hell out of its reader exactly as the novel does. The project pays homage to the mystery that is Gravity's Rainbow from its opening banana breakfast sequence down to its author, a famous recluse who refuses interviews and photographs, save for one we have from his high school yearbook. Perhaps the inexplicable is best understood from safely within the bounds of nonsense.

Demi Saleeb

We Dream in the Dark

Digital, 3D

"We Dream in the Dark" features an intimate dreamscape, where players are confined with the sole company of television. Such interactive 3D space allows for reflection and integration of concepts such as Hikkimori, Sonder, loneliness, and many more. Furthermore, the game can be interpreted as human relationship with technology; the lack of connection with self, others and desires of escapism. “We Dream in the Dark” serves as a reflection of my interpersonal struggles and experiences—feelings as though my future is still tied to my past, and grasping to find hope and life in my current reality. Considering the theme, “Save As,” this work is not intended to be polished or refined, though genuine in its presentation and honoring the artistic process of creation and self.

Yuma Shigyo

Fluidity

Acrylic Clear MDF, Birch Wood, PLA Filament

Nature is composed of an enormous amount of data, particle by particle. Similarly, curvilinear objects like circles and spheres are also the aggregations of many points. With a deep appreciation for the aesthetics created by these random particles, I crafted an abstract sculpture titled "Fluidity."

This sculpture serves as a representation of dynamic movement in nature, embodying processes such as fusion, diffusion, synthesis, decomposition, and more.

Jordan Tran

When it Rains it Pours

coffee, baking soda, cardboard, fishing line, polyester fiber, mesh, plastic pipes, zip ties, LED lights + AI generated photos, handwritten diary entries

When it Rains it Pours is an archive of my memories that depict the realities of what it was like for me, a young girl, to be exposed to drug addiction, gang violence, and street life in various disadvantaged, dangerous neighborhoods in California. All of these photos are AI generated and very closely replicate the visuals that match the memories of my past. While AI photo generation has “shortcomings” or “flaws” … the flaws in the photos accurately depict the way my brain, a human brain, remembers things, imperfectly. AI gave me the ability to recreate and share the memories that shaped me into who I am from a safe distance. The stories you read are loosely based on truth. Some of the identities, businesses, and events have been fictionalized for dramatic purposes. But a lot of this shit may have actually happened.

Lauren Villanueva

How I Thought I’d Say I Love You

Cyanotype prints on fabric

An introspective exploration of memory, longing, and the delicate dance between reality and the imagination. Delve into a heartfelt narrative that unravels from the perspectives of two individuals connected by a shared experience. As the story unfolds, the boundaries between memory and parallel realities blur, contemplating the bittersweet nature of relationships and the profound impact of a combination of 3 specific words. ‘How I Thought I’d Say I Love You’ is my personal exploration of the complexities of human emotion, offering a glimpse into the intimate depths of the human psyche where dreams and emotions intertwine, tapping into the universal yearning for what could have been.

Tacy Prins Woodlief

The Poleee

Risograph

The Poleee is a zine about a pretty forgettable place. you might have seen it, but probably forgot about it as you kept on driving. However, if your experience was mediated through google maps, you will have seen something completely different. A marker, listing this as The Poleee, and many reviews. I made the marker, but I don't know the people who left the reviews. The reviews are funny, fantastical, imaginative, and completely made up. Really, the listing is actively in conflict with the goal of google maps, which is to document the world and make it easier to find your way between real physical locations. The structure is there but the culture created in these reviews is not. In my view, the listing serves a different purpose: to make people laugh. It adds some humor to an otherwise monotonous drive through rural California, and that humor is what i have captured in the pages of this zine.

Hema Somaya & Allison Wu

Tarot GPT

Digital – Python, Visual Studio Code, card stock

Tarot GPT is an innovative fusion of technology and mysticism, where the ancient art of tarot meets artificial intelligence. By connecting the physical tarot cards to our system through a camera, Tarot GPT can detect the users energy and interprets each card, providing tailored readings for spirituality, love, and career.

Yolanda Xing

Awakening

Unity

Awakening is an immersive 3D game that casts players in the ongoing saga of Dylan, a cyborg character living in a never-ending digital reality. Awakening invites players to form a unique bond with the digital and physical spaces they inhabit. It presents the digital realm as a voyeuristic window into Dylan's life, while the gallery space becomes a passing scene, often given fleeting attention and little more than a backdrop for selfies. The continuous cycle of Dylan's death becomes both meaningless and empathetic, reflecting the transitory nature of engagement in both spaces.

Amie Xu

Curated Chaos: A Collage of Memories and Objects

Book, Installation

“Curated Chaos: A Collage of Memories and Objects” invites you to explore the world of cluttercore, where the art of chaos intertwines with the beauty of sentimental value. Featuring over 80 original photographs, the book serves as a poignant reflection on the evolving narrative of Amie's college experience, cataloguing the ever-growing collection of sentimental objects that have shaped her college years. The collection symbolizes a deliberate act of preserving moments in time, with each snapshot becoming a node in the timeline of her creative evolution. The book dives into the transitional space where the past converges with the present and signifies a celebration of growth during some of the most pivotal years of Amie's life.

Eric Zhou

Sky Scalped

3D/2D Animation

I cut off my head and threw it in the sky. It turned into birds. I called it thinking.

—Richard Siken

This piece captures the artist's evolution, where ideas break free, navigating between the tangible and the boundless.