Zhongding Cui, David Ruy - SCI-Arc, China

In the final three months of my architectural education, my relationship with my computer entered an intriguing yet puzzling phase. Driven by a technical curiosity in artificial intelligence algorithms, I found myself in a unique workflow. Once a task was initiated, my computer would labor independently, sometimes for several days and occasionally just for a few hours. It was unprecedented in architecture.

For my experiment, I took a standard Revit 2018 sample project and infused it with imagery from a 7th-century Chinese wood carving. This created a captivating blend—a clash between ancient Chinese cultural symbols and the more mundane, software-generated notions of what architecture ought to be.

As I neared the end of this project, I stumbled upon a poem through a Google search. Remarkably, the poem dated back 1,300 years, coinciding with the era of the Chinese wood carvings, thus elegantly tying together the threads of my multifaceted exploration.

Zhipeng Li - Zhejiang University of Science and Technology, China

Jingshan, located in Yuhang District, Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province, is a place of interest in China and occupies a high position in culture. During the Song Dynasty in China, Jingshan Temple was hailed as the top of the five mountains and ten temples in Jiangnan, earning the nickname of ""the first mountain in Jiangnan"". The popular Japanese tea ceremony in Japan also originated from Jingshan Tea Feast.

Jingshan's Guests is a VR film created out of a strong love for Jingshan culture. In the film, tour guide Xiao Qin will lead everyone into Jingshan, allowing the audience to experience the joy of Jingshan travel from three dimensions: food, accommodation, and transportation, understand its cultural stories, and experience its the cultural atmosphere. You will be able to watch Jingshan Temple during snowfall, the ancient path during cloudy days, and Luyuquan during sunny days in the film, with a total length of approximately 18 minutes.

Ah Young Shin - Royal College of Art, UK

STALL is a 5-minute VR fictional short film that aims to destigmatize menstruation for young people.

Our story revolves around a young person's first experience with menstruation. Overwhelmed by shame and reluctance to seek support from parents, they embark on an extraordinary journey by wishing themselves away into a toilet multiverse. Within each alternate universe, they encounter displays of solidarity and open discussion around the prevailing taboos of menstruation and understand that this is a natural process. The journey culminates in the realization that having periods is entirely normal and it's perfectly acceptable to seek help. Returning to their world, they finally find the courage to ask their parents for a pad.

Saraphina Moon Forman - Brown/RISD, USA

Tweenage Engineering is a pocket operator/synthesizer that we have been building for the past few months. We were inspired by the company Teenage Engineering and their sleek designer pocket operators. We thought they were cool but didn't want to pay for one, and we decided it would be fun to try to build one ourselves and began this collaborative project. The installation also includes a visualizer component, created in TouchDesigner and displayed on a TV--a reactive abstract visual as the audio plays.

Sylvie Bartusek - Brown, USA

Communal Spectre is an interactive sound installation, to take place for many days in a small closed off space. As you walk around the room, you hear the footsteps of everyone who has previously walked in the room all around you. The floor of the room is also recording you, and your own footsteps will be added to the layers of sound, ready for the next guest to experience.

Izzy Roth-Dishy - Brown, USA

A Short Video About Cadence is an experimental video and sound piece that examines how speech patterns and cadence manifest across different mediums. I recorded dialogue snippets from friends with varied cadences, and used Ableton Live to translate that audio into midi patterns which form the audio in the piece. I then pair that with found footage video, whose level of abstraction changes with the cadence of each audio clip.

Brett A. Halperin - University of Washington, USA

This work documents Resistive Thread, an interactive denim jacket refashioned from the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project's (AEMP) (Dis)location Black Exodus print zine. The augmented jacket plays audio stories, poetry, and music from embedded speakers when the interactive patches sewn with conductive thread are tapped upon. As social movement material, Resistive Threads extends the thread motif foregrounded in the zine, symbolizing and threading together the distinct yet related urban experiences of Black residents. It expands the (Dis)location series materially and spatially as a multi-city coalition including community partners in New York City, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, and St. Louis. The garment thus materializes themes of place, space, and belonging, as well as aims to raise awareness for urban issues related to intersections of housing, climate, and racial justice.

John Turner - Brown, USA

Sphere of No Form is a multimedia sound installation, taking form as a large, suspended hemisphere treated with a special highly light-absorbent black paint. Presented in an artificial/low-lit space to maximize the delocalizing effect of the paint, viewers are confronted with an alien and disorienting, yet alluring environment. In this sensory ambiguity, interactive sonic elements will (mis)guide viewers to move around in the space to inquire and attempt to grasp the piece, to approach and back away, movements to which it will respond sonically in discernible but unpredictable ways.

Jess Skyleson - RISD, USA

In The Concious Ear, I seek to explore the concept of the poetic voice, and how this is intertwined with the actual voice of the poet, which is then reflected in the voices of those who read their poems. Using data sonification techniques along with word and letter frequency data, I transformed a selection of her poetry into a non-verbal, aural experience, based on her individual selection of repeated words and sounds, as well as the relative frequency of these sounds in the English language. By layering this sonification with an actual reading of her poetry, I hope to reveal the voice of Emily–which, much like the poet herself, is both boldly present yet quietly hidden in each of her poems.

Lujan Yan - RISD, USA

Odessa is a VR environment inspired by a book I came across, The Last Demon. The book tells the story of two demons trying to gain access to their new paradise, the Odessa. In Odessa, the demons can do nothing and “play with their women”, the ultimate reward. Based on my own experience as an East Asian woman, and the experiences of non-male people surrounding me, women's body as display and ornamentation is still prevalent today. The VR environment of my piece consists of a maze and lounge space, dressed with furniture that combines the female body with metallic and organic forms to visualize the ongoing struggle, sexualization and objectification that women and non-cisgender people face.