Arts Division Newsletter

Senior student in Film and Digital Media, Beatriz Canuto, is embarking on her musical journey, and unveiled three songs with accompanying videos last February. Created outside the studio, these tracks represent a significant step in her artistic exploration. Love Tragedies explores the intricacies of emotionally exhausted individuals unable to reciprocate love. In Parasocial, she delves into one-sided relationships on celebrities, public figures, and fictional characters. Wine & Roses captures the dreams and yearning for companionship, expressed through vibrant visuals. As she kickstarts her musical journey, she invites everyone to explore her previous work on her YouTube channel.

Congratulations to Em Butler, first year SocDoc MFA, for winning this year’s People’s Choice award at the 2024 Grad Slam which took place on March 2 at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center in downtown Santa Cruz. Butler, who’s from Long Beach, CA, won for her entry, Coming Home to Mango Orchards, and says she chose to attend UC Santa Cruz for graduate study because “the social documentation program engages in political inquiry, so I trusted I’d be in spaces with other like-minded people with big hearts and minds.”

Professor of Film & Digital Media, John Jota Leaños’s installation delving into the trauma experienced in Indian residential schools throughout the Americas is featured in the traveling exhibition, Contemporary Ex-Votos: Devotion Beyond Medium at Gallery 400 and the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum in Chicago. The show was recently reviewed in the Chicago Tribune. Professor Leaños is also the lead media artist for the performance by Vanessa Sanchez and La Mezcla, Ghostly Labor, a dance theater work which is premiering in San Jose at the Hammer Museum on March 21 and 22.

Lili Diaz would describe herself as someone who’s much less funny than she thinks she is. As a Santa Cruz native Diaz was excited to move back home after graduating from San Jose State University. It’s been almost one year since Diaz started at University of California, Santa Cruz as a human resource specialist in the Arts Division where she loves getting together with students and helping them succeed.

Dr. Kortney Ryan Ziegler’s expertise spans across multiple disciplines. Ziegler is an award-winning tech entrepreneur, filmmaker, producer, social justice advocate, and scholar. Since graduating from UC Santa Cruz in 2003, he has founded four applications and platforms that address social issues head-on and provide solutions for them.

A new virtual reality (VR) game set in the world of Netflix’s hit series Stranger Things launches today—and UC Santa Cruz Assistant Teaching Professor of Computational Media Samantha Gorman is a key creative mind behind it as the game’s co-writer and narrative director. Gorman, who also is affiliated with UCSC’s Arts Division, said that this game reflects her passions for interactive narrative, immersive world design, and directing, which she brings to her teaching of UCSC engineering and arts students.

This major group exhibition, A Model at MUDAM, (February 9 – September 8, 2024) proposes a reflection on the role of the museum at the beginning of the 21st century. It reaffirms the need to think of the institution as a living place, sensitive and receptive to contemporary debates. Isaac Julien’s 2022 work Once Again... (Statues Never Die) will be on view. (photo: Isaac Julien, Night Rain (Once Again... Statues Never Die), 2022, courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro.)

The Art and Design: Games & Playable Media Program (AGPM) within the Department of Performance, Play & Design (PPD) recently received several top rankings from Animation Career Review’s 2024 Game Design School Rankings, including #7 in the Top 50 nationally, #3 in the Top 25 nationally among public schools and colleges, and #2 in the Top 10 in California and on the West Coast. These are their 12th annual rankings for animation and they considered over 150 schools with game design programs from across the U.S. in preparing this year's rankings.

Allen Riley, PhD Candidate, Film and Digital Media, has his video installation and arcade game Videofreak on display at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, NY through September 8, 2024. Videofreak reimagines the arcade game experience by emphasizing the art of video manipulation over traditional gameplay elements like scorekeeping and end goals. Inspired by the participatory ethos of the Portapak-wielding Videofreex art collective from the late ’60s and ’70s, the work connects the legacy of experimental video and audio synthesis tools to an interactive format for a wide audience.

Dital Arts and New Media (DANM) alumna and Film and Digital Media lecturer Livia Perez’s multi-awarded documentary, Who Killed Eloá?, was screened at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles in the Spotlight on: Brazilian Filmmakers Collective programmed by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Livia’s film was screened on March 2nd, followed by a Q&A with her and other members of the Brazilian Filmmakers Collective. Who Killed Eloá? has almost a million views on streaming and in festivals like Hot Docs and was awarded Best Short Documentary by the Alliance for Women in Media (Southern California).

For the MFA thesis exhibition course, DANM 215, graduating DANM MFA students met in-person and conducted studio visits with international visiting curator Lorenzo Balbi. Lorenzo Balbi, is the director of Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna (MAMbo) in Bologna, Italy and oversees the Villa of the Roses, Morandi Museum and house, and the Museum for the Memory of Ustica and Residence for artists. Balbi’s approach to public museum practice reflects a careful consideration of the historical richness of Italian art and culture, while also embracing contemporary exhibition praxis including artist residencies and city-wide festivals.

On March 2, eight undergrad students, who all study voice at UCSC with lecturers Sheila Willey and Emily Sinclair, participated in the Classical auditions for the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of the National Association of Teachers of Singing (SFBAC NATS). Conor Warshawsky and Gavin Pinnow tied for first place in the Upper College lower voice division; Maddison Ramirez took third place in the Lower College Treble voice division; and Kristiana Budke was awarded an Honorable Mention in the Upper College Treble division. Last fall, a number of students participated in the SFBAC NATS Musical Theater auditions as well. In the Lower College lower voice division, Louis Santia won first place, and Andrew Palacios won third. In the Upper College combined division, Gavin Pinnow won second place, Luna Gulisano won third place, and Kristiana Budke was awarded an Honorable Mention. Err Shirley was awarded an Honorable Mention in the Lower College treble division.

Last fall, Jane Grantham, fourth year undergraduate, Art & Design: Games & Playable Media (AGPM) in the Performance, Play and Design Department, submitted her work to the Narrative Review Competition hosted by the Game Developers Conference and was honored as a Gold Winner for her paper on Sally Face (2016). Participating students chose a game title and conducted a detailed and structured analysis of its narrative elements. Grantham is the first UCSC student since 2020 to claim a GDC Narrative Award. During the spring, she will attend the conference during the Narrative Summit to discuss her work.

The Probability Engine: Permafrost and the Last Piece of Antarctic Ice (2024) is being featured at Art Souterrain in Montreal March 16 - April 7 which addresses the urgent issue of the environment and climate change and will lead the public to think about the future and rethink their relationship with the environment. This series of artworks envisions a machine allowing audiences to explore potential futures of climate disasters and justice. Three sculptures, 3D printed from recycled materials, form the core of this work. Additionally, an augmented reality app depicts the effects of permafrost loss and explores potential solutions. The project highlights tipping points and their consequences, such as Antarctic ice melting leading to sea-level rise. Collaborating with scientific publications, micha cárdenas, Associate Professor of Critical Race & Ethnic Studies and Performance, Play & Design, and her team have created an immersive installation, making the realities of frozen landscapes and our interdependence tangible.

Andy Zenczak, electronic music studios tech, recently won his second California Music Video Award at the seventh annual gala in San Francisco. The music video he directed, West of West and East of Tokio (for James Hand) for Santa Cruz-based artist The Carolyn Sills Combo, won top honors in the Viewer’s Choice category for Best Duet. Featuring the vocals of Carolyn Sills and Sunshine Jackson, Zenczak worked with the artist to mix, direct and edit the award-winning video. Zenczak has produced, mixed, and engineered over 2,000 recordings for commercial release since 2001.

Passagem (2024) is an artistic project created by the Explode! Platform, which will take place April 12, 2024-January 5, 205, as an intervention in the library of the Institute of Arts and Sciences (IAS). The project combines a space for study, translation, lectures, and performances, bringing writings and thoughts on abolitionism from Brazil. This project is an ongoing dialogue with the Visualizing Abolition program. This collaboration was marked by the Visualizing Abolition Dinner São Paulo (2023), organized by  Explode at/with Casa do Povo. It was attended by a group of 40 people who are actively engaged in the abolitionist debate in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

On March 27th, Professor of Art Beth Stephens and her partner Annie Sprinkle will join Guillermo Gómez-Peña and the La Pocha Nostra troupe in Living Dioramas for a Museum of the Future, an evening of interactive performance and live art celebrating the legacy of Guillermo Gómez-Peña and La Pocha.