Stories

On July 2, PhD student Halo Starling will exhibit with fellow artist Libby Paloma in "NO SLEEP/NO PICNIC" at Human Resources LA.

On View:
July 2–12, 2026

Hours:
Wednesday–Sunday, 12–6PM

Opening Reception:
Thursday, July 2, 6–9PM with live performance

Address:
Human Resources Gallery
410 Cottage Home St, Los Angeles, CA

More information here.

NO SLEEP/NO PICNIC pairs Starling’s textile installation NO SLEEP (2026) with Paloma’s soft-sculptural installation NO PICNIC (2023), two works that refuse the idea that surviving difficulty should be invisible, dignified, or done alone.

Taken together, the diptych is a meditation on the near-constant state of queercrip survival, encountering and resisting barriers to access, and the resulting body trauma, all day and all night. NO SLEEP was created as a response to NO PICNIC, meditating on the embrace and challenges of a “world-softening” bedtime for traumatized crips. NO PICNIC is about seeking softness in the daytime in public; NO SLEEP is about struggling with softness in the nighttime in private. Together the works ask what it costs to keep going, and what forms of care make it possible.

Img (L to R): Halo Starling, detail, NO SLEEP (2026); Libby Paloma, installation view, NO PICNIC (2023).

SUPERCOLLIDER LA and Rip Space present "Wake Me Up Inside," an exhibition exploring platform culture, digital dependency, and networked futures.

MA+P PhD student Isabel Beaversserves as the current artistic director of SUPERCOLLIDER and MA+P PhD student Maisa Imamovic serves as co-lead of Rip Space.

On View:
June 5 - 27, 2026

Opening Reception:
June 7, 2026 || 7:00-10:00pm

Address:
Wilshire Online
6135 Wilshire Ave.
Los Angeles, CA
Exhibition on 3rd Floor

Congratulations to MA+P major Ming Leng and MA+P minor Maria Carolina Zensen Simoes, graduates of the Class of 2026! Both Leng and Simoes were awarded the USC Steven & Kathryn Sample Renaissance Scholar Prize during this year's Academic Honors Convocation.

The Renaissance Scholar Prize recognizes and celebrates USC undergraduates who have excelled academically while pursuing at least two widely separate fields of study. Awardees receive $10,000 to be used towards their future graduate studies.

Ming graduated with a Bachelor of Architecture and a Bachelor of Arts in Media Arts and Practice. Her work spans urban research and documentary storytelling through mixed-media animation, and she will continue her studies in the M.Des Mediums program at Harvard University this fall.

Maria Carolina Zensen Simoes is a graduating senior studying History and Archaeology with a minor in Digital Studies. She is passionate about the ancient histories of Latin America and the intersection of archaeology, history, and digital humanities. This fall, she will continue her academic journey as a PhD student in Archaeology at University of California, Berkeley.

An afternoon bringing together artists, archivists, scholars, and technologists to explore how immersive media is preserved and remembered.

Hosted by USC’s School of Cinematic Arts in collaboration with LACMA, Getty and the LA Media Art Archiving Association. The program brings together artists, archivists, scholars, and technologists to explore technological obsolescence, immersive media histories, and the afterlives of XR artworks.

Program Highlights

• Conversations between artists and archivists on preserving immersive works
• Talks on technological obsolescence and XR histories
• A curated exhibition of archival XR artworks & films
• Rare in-person viewing of the original Sensorama (1960) from USC HMH Moving Image Archive

Panels & Talks include:

› Artists + Archivists in Conversation
Russell Zych (LACMA), Peter Wu+, Gina Kim (UCLA), Wilde Davis (UCLA), and Dino Everett (USC)

› Who Owns the Afterlife of Technology?
Joey Heinen (LACMA), Jesse McCulloch (Snap), Mark Hellar, Rachel Falconer (Goldsmiths), and Ziyaad Bhorat (Mozilla Foundation)

› Is XR Emerging Media?
Scott Fisher (USC), Nancy Bennett (WEVR)

› Rewriting XR History: A Feminist Perspective
Mary Matheson (Agog), Lily Baldwin, Beata Calińska (The Music Center), Scarlett Kim (Center for Unclassifiable Technologies and Experiences), Zeynep Abes (USC)

More Event Details Here

Congratulations to MA+P professor Vicki Callahan! Her book Mixed Realities: Emergent Media and Gender, co-authored with Sarah Atkinson, has been shortlisted for the BAFTSS Publication and Practice Awards.

A blurb about the book, from Wayne State University Press:
"Bolstered by the voices and experiences of dozens of women, nonbinary, and genderqueer new media practitioners, Mixed Realities explores the dynamic intersection of gender and emerging digital technologies. From realms of transmedia, multiplatform, virtual reality, augmented reality, and immersive technologies, this work uncovers the universal challenges and systemic gender-based exclusions individuals face. Authors Sarah Atkinson and Vicki Callahan explore how emergent media have inherited traditional media's systemic biases but also offer new opportunities for diverse and equitable storytelling and engagement. Highlighting a surge in gender-diverse participation and innovation, this book counters historical accounts and details essential yet overlooked contributions to the field. Mixed Realities serves as an early archive of diverse contributions, with firsthand accounts that challenge the existing biased narratives of media's history and evolution. Atkinson and Callahan emphasize the necessity of including underrepresented voices, stories, models, and futures, and they underscore the importance of recognizing and valuing a spectrum of perspectives in both emergent media and established media contexts."

PhD alum Aroussiak Gabrielian, now an assistant professor of Landscape Architecture + Urbanism at USC's School of Architecture, is featured in a new exhibition titled Neighborhood Ecology at the Brand Library & Art Center.

Her project, "The Geography of the LA Freeways," revisits the idea of Autopia from Reyner Banham's 1971 book "Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies." Aroussiak updates the project through a lens of digital capture, creating a series of large-scale prints that present a frame-by-frame sequence tracing the entire length of the I-5 freeway within LA County in both directions with images pulled from Google Street View.

The exhibition will be open through May 9, 2026.

Created by the students in IML 477: Embodied Storytelling and Immersive Docu-Narratives, Emberence is an immersive exhibit about wildfire.

MA+P PhD student Zeynep Abes and MA+P undergrad Julianne Wong recently traveled to Barcelona to present "Immersive Synthetic Memories" at the Mozilla Festival, a project developed in collaboration with Domestic Data Streamers.

The work explores how personal memories can be re-imagined through generative AI and translated into immersive 3D environments, inviting participants to step inside their own reconstructed recollections.

Meet MA+P professor Michael Bodie, in this great profile on the USC Cinema website.

Read the full profile here.

MA+P PhD candidate Curtis Tamm recently developed sound work for artists Maki Ohkojima and Yosuke Tsuji, Tokyo-based artists who work together as Maki Ohkojima.

Thanks to Curtis, their project,Where Lies Your Afterbirth, features a 21-channel sound composition inspired by Maki’s sculptural and large-scale 2d works. The composition includes archival recordings, original music and field recordings captured throughout Mexico and Japan.

The installation will be on view through October 19 at the Kanagawa Arts Theatre Theater in Japan.

PhD student David Kelley will present a new installation in collaboration with Patty Chang at the Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery at ArtCenter College of Design, with an opening on Thursday, September 18, 2025, 5:00 – 7:00 p.m.

Titled “Our Abyssal Kin,” the installation uses video, sound, and sculpture to challenge the rigid distinction between humans and nature established by Western science. Instead, the exhibition insists on the inseparability of human and ecological systems. In a time in which environmental justice and climate issues have become increasingly urgent, this exhibition situates deep-sea ecology within historical struggles for agency and liberation.

The exhibition will be open September 18, 2025 - January 24, 2026.

Exhibition website here.

PhD student Halo Starling's exhibition at USC's ONE Archives will close, Friday, September 12, 2025, 6:00 – 9:00 p.m. with an artist's talk in which Starling will discuss his year-long archival research process, collage methodologies, and trans aesthetic tactics. Guest poetry readings will feature Heather Gray, Isabel Beavers, and Huntrezz Janos, who will amplify the themes of the exhibition. The evening will close with a reception allowing plenty of time to enter ‘faerie space’ for the final time.

Event link here.

USC Media Arts + Practice invites you to join us on the evening of May 6 for FROM THE OUTSIDE IN, an exhibition of thesis projects created by senior undergraduate students in the Media Arts + Practice BA program. These projects integrate research across multiple fields and together represent a holistic view of the emerging media landscape.

Open to the public. No RSVP required.

Exhibition Opening:
May 6, 2025
5pm: Screenings in SCI 106
6pm: Exhibition/Reception in Stages 3 + 4

Gallery Hours:
May 7-8, 10am - 4pm
May 9, 10am - 12pm
Stages 3 + 4

Luna Lens Film Festival
May 3-4, 1-6pm
SCA 112
*For festival schedule, visit @lunalensfilmfest on instagram

[en busca de la nada]
A live video+audio performance
May 7-8, 6-7pm
RZC 119

Location:
USC School of Cinematic Arts
3470 McClintock Avenue (SCI 106),
900 West 34th Street (Stages 3+4 and SCA 112), and
3131 S Figueroa St (RZC 119)
Los Angeles, CA 90089

This program is open to all eligible individuals. The Division of Media Arts and Practice (MA+P) operates all of its programs and activities consistent with the University’s Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. We request that individuals requiring accommodations or auxiliary aids such as sign language interpreters and alternative format materials notify us at least 7 days prior to the event. Every reasonable effort will be made to provide reasonable accommodations in an effective and timely manner.

The Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University will welcome MA+P PhD graduate Catherine Griffiths to the Full-time Faculty of the Computational Design Practices Program for Fall 2024.

Read more here.

USC Media Arts + Practice invites you to join us April 18-25, 2024 for iMAPPENING 2024.

iMappening is a yearly exhibition of experimental works-in-progress from the interdisciplinary Media Arts + Practice PhD program, including film, video, installation, animation, performance, generative AI, sound, and other media.

Open to the public. No RSVP required.

Screening Program
Thursday, April 18, 2024
Broccoli Theatre (SCA 112)
6:00 pm Reception + 7:00 pm Screening

Exhibition Opening Reception
Friday, April 19, 2024
Soundstage 4 + SCI Lobby
5:00 pm

Exhibition Gallery Hours
April 22-25, 2024
Soundstage 4 + SCI Lobby
12:00 - 6:00 pm

Location
USC School of Cinematic Arts
900 West 34th Street
Los Angeles, CA 90089

PhD student, sound artist and DJ Kumi James (aka BAE BAE), currently an artist in residence at the Hammer Museum, will stage a durational performance in proximity to Rita McBride’s installation Particulates. James’s work explores the immanence of what can be made of a moment, the vital nature of collectivity, and the integral connection between growth and decay. Performing with James will be Colloboh (a portmanteau of Collins Oboh)

Read announcement here.

PhD alum Emilia Yang was selected to be a 2023 Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Resident in the Visual Arts, Literary Arts, Filmmaking Track.

Read the announcement here.

PhD student Sarah Ciston recently published A Critical Field Guide for Working with Machine Learning Datasets, a public resource that "offers questions, suggestions, strategies, and resources to help people work with existing machine learning datasets at every phase of their lifecycle."

Read the field guide here.

This November, students in the ZAP student organization hosted a 24-hour media making festival called Zapathon. Open to all Media Arts + Practice students, the festival was an opportunity for collective artmaking and community building amongst the undergraduate population. Students worked individually and in groups to create videos, sound pieces, graphics, and experimental media.

BONDS, a zine published by MA+P's undergraduate student organization (ZAP), collects wildly varied pieces of media including poems, photographs, fashion spreads, illustrations, links to short films and hard-to-classify fare.

Read more here.

An interview with Media Arts and Practice alumna, Ryan Cenicola.

Read the full interview here.

The Music Center in Los Angeles recently announced the appointment of Kamal Sinclair as senior director of the performing arts center’s Digital Innovation Initiative (DII), a 10-year pilot program designed to explore and create digital and virtual reality experiences throughout Los Angeles.

Read the announcement here.

USC Media Arts + Practice invites you to join us on the evening of April 29th for the opening reception of iMAPPENING 2022.

iMAPPENING is the year-end showcase of media art projects created by students in the interdisciplinary Media Arts + Practice PhD program in the School of Cinematic Arts at USC. Featuring more than a dozen pieces that exemplify a surprising spectrum of arts-based research, this year's show imagines the near future, remembers the ancestral past, critiques ongoing violence, considers care alongside crisis, and invites, as possible antidotes, non-lexical conversation, hand-weaving, and zine-making. The showcase includes performances, screenings, projection pieces, and interactive media, and in its cheerful eclecticism, invites visitors to reflect on the often profound ways in which concepts and ideas may take shape in and through media and performance.

Open to the public. No RSVP required.

Opening Event:
April 29, 2022
5:00 pm: Screenings in SCI 106
Exhibition in SCI 206 + SCA Stage 4 immediately following the screenings.

Gallery Hours:
April 30-May 3
12:00 pm - 6:00 pm
SCA Stage 4

Location:
USC School of Cinematic Arts
900 West 34th Street (SCA Stage 4)
3470 McClintock Avenue (SCI 106+206)
Los Angeles, CA 90089

Three students from the Fall 2021 IML 475 class (The Art and Practice of Giant Screen Cinema) were selected to present their work to the Giant Screen Cinema Association conference at Universal City Walk in March 2022.

Emilia Yang has published an article in the International Journal of Communication (iJoC) entitled "AMA y No Olvida Collectivizing Memory Against Impunity: Transmedia Memory Practices, Modular Visibility, and Activist Participatory Design in Nicaragua." This article presents the first chapter of Yang's upcoming dissertation.

Read more here.

Students enrolled in this semester's IML 475 class (IMAX: The Art and Practice of Giant Screen Cinema) traveled to Red Rock Canyon State Park on a practical field trip to capture landscape footage. The students completed photography workshops throughout the park, including the Old Dutch Cleanser Mines and Fossil Falls.

Congratulations to PhD alum micha cárdenas on the upcoming publication of her book "Poetic Operations: Trans of Color Art in Digital Media." In her analyses of Giuseppe Campuzano’s holographic art, Esdras Parra’s and Kai Cheng Thom’s poetry, Mattie Brice’s digital games, Janelle Monáe’s music videos, and her own artistic practice, cárdenas shows how algorithmic analysis provides new modes of understanding the complex processes of identity and oppression and the intersection of gender, sexuality, and race.

The book will be released in January 2022.

Read more, from Duke University Press

Professor Alex McDowell's Planet Junk project, a student collaboration across 12 universities, was featured in Dezeen magazine. McDowell challenged students to use the worldbuilding methodology to imagine and evolve a 300-year future society that is built on the detritus of a ruined civilization. The USC contributors to the project were students enrolled in McDowell's course, IML 475: World Building, Narrative Design and Design Visualization.

Read the story here.

An interview with Media Arts and Practice student, Luke Greenwood.

Read the full interview here.

An interview with MA+P graduate certificate alumnus, Vanessa Monterosa.

Read the full interview here.

An interview with Media Arts and Practice alumnus, Eric Liu.

Read the full interview here.

As the CEO of Emblematic Group, Nonny de la Peña (PhD '19) uses cutting-edge technologies to tell stories — both fictional and news-based — that create intense, empathic engagement on the part of viewers. She has been called “The Godmother of Virtual Reality” by Engadget, while Fast Company named her “One of the People Who Made the World More Creative” for her pioneering work in immersive journalism.

Watch her TED talk here.

An interview with a Media Arts and Practice undergraduate alumnus, Chandler Zausner.

Read the full interview here.

After seeing the distance between kids and their elders in his own Jewish community, Ethan Kurzrock (BA '21) developed the Haggadah Project for L.A. middle schoolers.

Read the full story here.

This summer, media artist Michael "Caco" Peguero joins us for our annual PhD Visiting Artist and Scholar Seminar.

Caco is a digital media artist, educator, and founder of United Futures, a tech-focused creative studio practicing at the intersection of visual art, new media, and immersive environments. He has a background in architecture and a strong interest in emerging technologies, and creates spatial experiences that seamlessly blend physical and digital interaction. His work examines themes of collective agency, the limits of representation, and the environment as interface.

Photos show the seminar participants engaged in a recent spatial exercise, as well as some photogrammetry from a project exploring history and archives.

Congrats to PhD student Antigoni Tsagkaropoulou on their current exhibition in the Thessaloniki Biennale.

Antigoni's installation, "In the Wild," is a living, visual poem composed of a film and an aquatic garden, borrowing its title from HRI (Human-Robot Interaction), where the term refers to what happens beyond the controlled conditions of the lab. Here, “in the wild” is about softer and queer ways of sensing and understanding ourselves and the world around us, beyond the demands of optimization, legibility, and extraction.

Filmed through digital video, 16mm, archival material, and a robot-dog camera, the work moves between Kalochori in Thessaloniki, the Ballona Wetlands in Los Angeles, and the LIRES Robotic Lab at the University of Macedonia, where Dr. Anna-Maria Velentza appears beside the social robots that accompanied her doctoral research in Human-Robot Interaction.

During the opening, the audience was able to experience robotic and human performers in a live interaction within the world of the installation. Performers: Mochi Georgiou and Huntrezz Janos

------
Landscape and Planting Design by Despoina Sarakinioti
Aquatic Plant Consultant by Giannis Gryllis
Cinematography by Antigoni Tsagkaropoulou, David De Rozas, Kleitos Kyriakides
Music Composition and Sound Design by Aliki Leftherioti
The film was produced at The Center For Ethnographic Media Arts, University of Southern California
Plants Sponsored by Gryllis Water Lilies

Short film: 4k digital, 16mm film, 19:00 min, color, sound, Greece, Los Angeles, 2026 Aquatic Garden: water, aquatic plants, sheet metal, waterproofing membrane, ears of grain, cut inflorescences, dried leaves, trunks

USC Media Arts + Practice invites you to join us on the evening of May 5 for PROOF OF LIFE, an exhibition of thesis projects created by senior undergraduate students in the Media Arts + Practice BA program. These projects integrate research across multiple fields and together represent a holistic view of the emerging media landscape.

Open to the public. No RSVP required.

Exhibition Opening:
May 5, 2026, 5pm
Stages 3 + 4

Gallery Hours:
May 6-7, 10am - 4pm
May 8, 10am - 12pm
Stages 3 + 4

Screenings:
The Tides
May 5, 4pm, SCI 106
May 6, 7pm, SCI 106

To you & me, 40 years apart
May 5, 8pm, SCI 106
May 7, 8pm, SCI 106

Location:
USC School of Cinematic Arts
900 West 34th Street (Stages 3+4)
3470 McClintock Avenue (SCI 106)
Los Angeles, CA 90089

This program is open to all eligible individuals. The Division of Media Arts and Practice (MA+P) operates all of its programs and activities consistent with the University’s Notice of Non-Discrimination.

Congratulations to MA+P alum Nicolas Diaz-Magaloni for being selected as part of National Geographic's 2026 Field Ready Cohort!

Field Ready is a professional development program designed to accelerate the careers of unscripted storytellers through hands-on mentorship, practical training and real-world production experience. Field Ready also will be collaborating with not-for-profit Wildscreen, an international community for natural world storytellers spanning the wildlife film, television and photography industry.

Nicolas has worked with the Los Angeles Times and produced compelling visual narratives for institutions like the Los Angeles Natural History Museum, contributing to its Sacrifice Zones exhibit, which highlights environmental challenges in underserved communities. His work explores critical issues such as illegal logging in Michoacán, the environmental degradation of Long Beach’s Sacrifice Zone, threats to El Saguaro National Park, and the lived realities of Central Valley migrant communities. His storytelling has also earned a Student BAFTA nomination and the Amazon MGM Studios Future Cinema Creator Grant.

First-year PhD student Virginia Zangs (M.S. CDP ’24) is presenting “Networked Topologies” and “Counter-Mapping Traceroutes” at the Architecture Museum Munich, two works that examine internet infrastructures and the material externalities of socio-technical networks.

These projects trace the situatedness of ecological and geopolitical dimensions of digital infrastructures, the energy-intensive architectures, extractive material dependencies, and uneven infrastructural geographies shaped by political and economic forces. Her project is published in the accompanying book catalog ‘City in the Cloud – Data on the Ground: The Architecture of Data’ edited by Cara Hähl-Pfeifer, Damjan Kokalevski and Andres Lepik, published by ArchiTangle, Berlin.

Recent PhD graduate Dr. Sarah Ciston has just been named Professor of Computational Thinking & Aesthetic Doing at the Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln (KHM) in Cologne.

At KHM, Ciston plans to start a new chapter of Creative Code Collective, an interdisciplinary community for collaborative learning in programming that they founded while at USC in 2019. This will also be the focus of Ciston's first specialist seminar at KHM.

Rector Mathias Antlfinger and Prof. Dr. Sarah Ciston (Photo: KHM)

Read the full announcement here.

Current PhD student Maisa Imamovic has recently published a new book, Maisa in Webland: Detouring UX Destinies (Set Margins, 2025).

A brief description:

What does ‘user-friendly’ website mean if, on it, online behaviors like stalking, teasing, and ghosting — once considered peripheral — are now central to survival, care, and belonging? How to thrive without becoming an “Interdisciplinary Unicorn”: the state’s most beloved user-citizen fluent in multiple registers of production, optimization, and self-branding? How in this beautiful world is one supposed to log off, when surveillance and privacy erosion have been normalized? And how, oh how, could users possibly think of building the alternatives, when cool and cringe online acts, all activate the platform’s reward system: the unleashing of emoji-filled praise? How to resist the platform’s toxic seduction?

Haunted by screenshots of early cyberfeminist websites and in dialogue with digital sages, web scripts, and business interests, media artist, web developer, and author Maisa Imamović embarks on a philosophical and practice-based crusade through the internet’s surface and its shadows. To expose the various ways of thriving online without surrendering to optimization, the book explores imperfect uses of perfect software, preservation of precarious web infrastructures, tactical content strategies, and experiments with autonomous financial systems — all wrapped in educational efforts to sustain criticality amid automation. Through these traversals beneath the scroll, Maisa finds her Webland: speculative, broken, and oftentimes, poetic infrastructure where logic destabilizes, binaries dissolve, and meaning evades monetization. But can a non-extractive internet exist beyond metaphor? Can poetry rewire protocol? Or will her sanctuary be absorbed into the very architectures it resists?

MA+P BA alumnus Nicolas Magaloni's student BAFTA-nominated film "El Retorno De Las Animas," was published earlier this month in El Pais. This film was a part of Nico's senior thesis project while in the MA+P undergraduate program.

Read full post here.

Speculative Assemblages, currently on view in the Signal + Noise Gallery, features seven works by acclaimed media artist Weidi Zhang. The pieces, from the previous four years, explore artificial memory, language, and immersive poetics with an emphasis on the tensions and synergies that emerge among machine automation, artistic decision-making, and participant interactivity. Weid’s projects range from interactive AI installations and AI films built on participatory datasets to large-scale immersive installations and planetarium shows, and they demonstrate Zhang’s visual style, which often captures a beautiful sense of unending transformation and instability.

Weidi is a new media artist, designer, and Assistant Professor of Immersive Experience Design at Arizona State University’s MIX Center. She has exhibited her award-winning work worldwide at venues such as ISEA, Artechouse NYC, and MUTEK. We are delighted to present her inspiring work in our space!

PhD alum Emilia Yang and PhD candidate Romi Morrison have been named as members of the Year Twelve cohort of NEW INC, the first museum-led incubator for art, design, and technology founded by the New Museum in 2014. Yang joins the Social Architecture Track, and Morrison joins the Art & Code track.

Incubator members, working at the intersection of art, design, technology, and entrepreneurship, will participate in NEW INC’s yearlong program, which includes a values-centered business education curriculum, mentorship, and opportunities to showcase their work to the public, including NEW INC’s annual DEMO festival at the close of the program year.

Yang, currently Assistant Professor of Art and Design at University of Michigan Stamps School of Art & Design, utilizes expanded forms of digital media (XR, transmedia, web, interactive, films, archives, performance, games and public interventions) for the creation of community-based transformative justice memory projects and futures. Her practice-based research explores the role of memory, violence, emotions, performance, and participation in the political imagination.

Morrison is currently Assistant Professor in the Design Media Arts program at University of California, Los Angeles and a 2024–2026 Just Tech Fellow. Using maps, data, sound, performance, and video, their installations center Black diasporic technologies that challenge the demands of an increasingly quantified world—reducing land into property, people into digits, and knowledge into data. Their current projects explore theories of Black Computational Thought, entropy, and forms of kinship that thrive in the face of uncertainty and unpredictability.

Meet the rest of the NEW INC Year Twelve cohort here.

PhD alum Samantha Gorman of Tender Claws just presented the company’s newest project, Face Jumping, in competition in the Venice Immersive section at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival.

Face Jumping is an interactive VR short that uses eye-tracking technologies as both muse and platform to explore the impossible desire of seeing through another’s eyes. Visitors navigate a journey of rebirth and evolution by meeting the gaze of other characters and swapping perspectives – including those of birds, rocks, delivery bots, ghosts, cowboys and clouds.

The creators explain, “This project originated from our explorations into how eye-tracking as input can uniquely resonate. We wanted to use sight as an active mechanic, rather than merely a cursor. The moment of making eye contact with another being can be profound – we latch onto that feeling as a starting point to examine other perspectives and modes of perception. We hope Face Jumping evokes curiosity and joy, as it immerses viewers in absurdist realities.”

Congratulations to Samantha and the Tender Claws team!

Learn more about the project here.

On September 19 MA+P will host renowned cinema artists Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder, who will lead three hands-on workshops for USC students exploring projection, light, and camera-less image creation.

RSVP for the workshop here!

USC Media Arts + Practice invites you to join us April 24 - May 1 for iMAPPENING 2025.

iMappening is a yearly exhibition of experimental works-in-progress from the interdisciplinary Media Arts + Practice PhD program, including film, video, installation, animation, performance, generative AI, sound, and other media.

Open to the public. No RSVP required.

Exhibition Reception
April 24
Soundstage 4
5:00 pm

Screening Program
April 25
SCI 106
7:00 pm

Exhibition Gallery Hours
April 25 - May 1
(weekdays only)
Soundstage 4
10:00 am - 6:00 pm

Location
USC School of Cinematic Arts
900 W 34th St (Soundstage 4)
3470 McClintock Ave (SCI 106)
Los Angeles, CA 90089

This program is open to all eligible individuals. The Division of Media Arts and Practice (MA+P) operates all of its programs and activities consistent with the University’s Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. We request that individuals requiring accommodations or auxiliary aids such as sign language interpreters and alternative format materials notify us at least 7 days prior to the event. Every reasonable effort will be made to provide reasonable accommodations in an effective and timely manner.

MA+P PhD graduate Behnaz Farahi will join the MIT Media Lab's Program in Media Arts and Sciences (MAS) as Assistant Professor, Transformative Design—Design + Technology for Societal Impact starting September 1, 2024.

Photo credit: Behnaz Farahi, Blindness Immersive Installation 2003

Read more here.

Between November 28 and December 1, 2023, PhD-level iMAP and CAMS students in IML 602: Practice of Media Arts curated a mid-year exhibition of works in progress in the SCA Gallery. Works-in-progress included a clay fountain of divers; a corridor haunted by an AI entity; various film essays; point cloud representations of an abandoned stadium; and etchings of tumultuous construction workers.

Descriptions and images of the works of all participants can be found here, and the websites for all participants can be found below.

Eneos Çarka
David de Rozas
David Kelley and Patty Chang
Andrea S. Kim
Ellie Schmidt
Halo Starling
Sichong Xie

The USC art schools present a full day of panels, workshops, and activities exploring the potential for art to produce social and political change.

Image: Still from Hemorrhage, 2023, an animated film by Ruth Hayes

Read more here.

USC Media Arts + Practice invites you to join us on the evening of May 2 for REALITY CHECK: WHO ARE YOU? HOW DO YOU KNOW?, an exhibition of thesis projects created by senior undergraduate students in the Media Arts + Practice BA program. These projects integrate research across multiple fields and together represent a holistic view of the emerging media landscape.

Open to the public. No RSVP required.

Opening Event:
May 2, 2023
5​:00 pm: Screenings+Performance in SCI 106
6:15 pm: Exhibition in Stages 3 + 4

Gallery Hours:
May 3-5, 2023
10:00 am - 5:00 pm
Stages 3 + 4

Location:
USC School of Cinematic Arts
3470 McClintock Avenue (SCI 106)
900 West 34th Street (Stages 3 + 4)
Los Angeles, CA 90089

MA+P faculty member and co-chair, Holly Willis, will co-direct the new USC Center for Generative AI and Society. This center will explore the transformative impact of artificial intelligence on culture, education, media and society.

Learn more here.

MA+P PhD student Selwa Sweidan and her collaborator Nina Sarnelle will be facilitating a 4-part online workshop through the School of Making Thinking, hosted by Abrons Art Center. This workshop series is a part of larger ongoing collaborative research process called Touch Praxis exploring touch as a time-based medium and a form of co-creative knowledge.

Learn more here.

Ashley York has been selected as a 2022 awardee for the Propelle program, a female-focused accelerator initiative from partners Everywoman Studios, Endemol Shine North America and Realscreen. Ashley was selected in the Documentary category for her project (em)Dear Appalachia.

Read the announcement here.

The DECOLONIALATHON was a 2-day community design event held on May 14-15, 2022 in Los Angeles that co-creatively explored decolonization and augmented reality (AR) from an anti-oppressive, anti-racist, and intersectional feminist lens.

Learn more here.

MA+P undergraduates Dani Takahashi ('23) and Summer Xiang ('23), along with teammate Bradley Manucha (BS Architecture, '22), have been named finalists for the Biodesign Challenge, a national competition that encourages students to explore biotech’s entanglements within society—in the way it empowers people, contributes to structural inequities, and creates opportunities for change.

Their project, “Prosthetic B-Habitat: growing food networks in communities," was chosen from several projects created as part of a graduate-level Biodesign course offered by the School of Architecture. Dani, Summer and Bradley will be presenting their project at the Biodesign Summit on June 20-24, where they will be competing against 54 other universities.

Learn more about the competition here.

PhD alum Triton Mobley's essay "Volumetric Black: Post-Cinematic Blackness" was published as a part of Materializing Digital Futures: Touch, Movement, Sound and Vision, a new volume edited by Toija Cinque and Jordan Beth Vincent.

View the book here.

PhD Alum Behnaz Farahi's new piece "Returning the Gaze" was recently featured in an article in Fast Company. Created for fashion brand ANNAKIKI's recent Milan runway show, the piece considers the male gaze and surveillance culture, themes that are present in much of Farahi's work.

Read the story here.

An interview with Media Arts and Practice student, Kyle Ang.

Read the full interview here.

Filmmaker and media scholar Gabriel Peters-Lazaro (better known as Gabe) brought his love of creative media practice to the USC Media Arts and Practice community, where he served as a beloved professor and mentor until his passing in 2021. In his honor, his family and professional community have launched a memorial fund to provide much-needed scholarships and financial support to students whose work shares Gabe's commitment to mediamaking, critical scholarship, civic engagement and technological innovation.

Learn more about the fund and how to contribute.

Congratulations to alum Behnaz Farahi, who won the prestigious Cooper Hewitt 2021 National Design Award for Digital Design.

Read more here.

An interview with Media Arts and Practice alumna, Georgina Chiou.

Read the full interview here.

MA+P PhD alumna Nonny de la Peña, dubbed the "Godmother of Virtual Reality” by Forbes and the Guardian, is joining Arizona State University to design and lead a new graduate program and center in emerging media and narrative based in Los Angeles.

Read the story here.

MA+P adjunct faculty member Qianqian Ye has just been appointed as the new co-lead of the p5.js project, with evelyn masso. Congratulations to Qianqian and evelyn!

Read the full announcement here.

On Our Radar 2021 features noteworthy projects in all disciplines that advanced to the final round in the competitive selection process for the Creative Capital Award. This year, micha cárdenas (PhD '15) and Susana Ruiz (PhD '15) and their project Oceanic is one of the many incredible projects highlighted.

Read about the project here.

An interview with Media Arts and Practice alumna, Jordan Fowler.

Read the full interview here.

Behnaz Farahi, a Media Arts and Practice PhD student, redraws the boundaries between humans and technology.

Read the full story here.

"Inventing ELIZA: How the First Chatbot Shaped the Future of AI," co-authored by MA+P PhD alum Sarah Ciston and published by The MIT Press, will release July 14.

As we reach the 60th anniversary of ELIZA’s public debut, "Inventing ELIZA" offers the first comprehensive critical analysis of Joseph Weizenbaum’s groundbreaking chatbot system through the lens of critical code studies. Drawing on extensive archival research at MIT, Stanford, and UCLA, this book presents the rediscovered original source code of ELIZA alongside previously unseen scripts that had been missing for decades, revealing a far more sophisticated system than previously documented. Sarah Ciston, David Berry, Anthony Hay, Mark Marino, Peter Millican, Arthur Schwarz, Jeff Shrager, and Peggy Weil trace ELIZA’s development (1965–1968), revealing that Weizenbaum created a chatbot within a conversational programming environment with previously unknown innovations well ahead of its time. Through close reading of both code and paratexts, the book reconstructs ELIZA’s conceptual evolution and situates it within the historical context of early AI development.

The book’s website includes a faithful recreation of the first chatbot and news about continued research.

Congratulations to MA+P professor Vicki Callahan! Her co-authored book, "Mixed Realities: Gender and Emergent Media," has been shortlisted for Monograph of the Year by the Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association.

Judges' comments:
"The book makes a timely contribution to current debates around the importance of digital technologies, not least by showing both the relentless inequality of media industries globally but also the resilience and creativity of the women, non-binary and queer individuals who work within them."

Award winners will be announced during the MeCCSA Annual Conference 2026, hosted by Leicester University, 2-4th September 2026.

Flux Festival 2026 will take place on Saturday, April 25, 2:00 - 11:00 p.m. at Blum Gallery in Culver City. The event is a collaboration that includes USC AI for Media & Storytelling (AIMS), Flux, the Mozilla Foundation, and the USC Gould School of Law.

The event begins at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, April 25, and showcases new forms of media and storytelling across AR, VR, interactive installation, video, music, and kinetic sculpture.

The line-up includes talks by artists such as Andrew Thomas Huang, Esteban Arellan and Portrait XO; performances by Tina Tarighian, Sara Silkin, Roxanne Harris, and Geller; and all kinds of artworks, including new work by Tender Claws, Lauren Lee McCarthy, mots, Yaloo and others throughout Blum Gallery in Culver City.

Event Details Here

MA+P PhD alum Samantha Gorman's studio Tender Claws won the XR Experience Competition at SXSW 2026 for their project "Body Proxy."

(photo by Tender Claws)

""Body Proxy" speculates that AI’s coming instrumentalization of the world will necessitate human embodiment. The installation is framed as corporate onboarding - part casting call, part IPO (“Initial Person Offering”) in which recruits enter a market where their physical agency is the asset. Assessed by AIs treating the body as a peripheral device, participants enact algorithmic choreographies where props are test vectors and compliance is a site of improvisation. Collapsing the gig-economy and agentic tool-use, the piece questions a future in which the human is not a user, but an interface - wetware executing commands the software cannot."

Now on view in the MA+P/SCI Building Lobbies: What Melts, Remains, a collaborative project from the Affective Media Lab.

Right now, many people are experiencing a multitude of strong feelings in this current world: fear, uncertainty, anger, grief, numbness to name a few.

In this communal installation What Melts, Remains, participants place small objects representing their emotions in ice trays which are then frozen. These blocks of ice are placed in the vessel located in the SCI Lobby and, over time, the ice will melt; the objects are revealed and come to rest together.

What was frozen becomes visible.

What was separate becomes collective.

The melted ice water is gathered and used to nourish seedlings of plants representing peace, protection and resilience. The melted ice water symbolically transforms harm and fear into care. What once held tension will help something grow.

When the plants are ready, they will go back out into the world.

What is frozen can melt. What remains is what we must care for.

How to Participate:
To participate, visit the Emporium of Ice and Time in the MA+P Lobby (SCI 101), Monday-Friday, 10am-4pm. Choose a small object that represents how you’re feeling right now. (Use the materials provided or bring your own). Fill out a card explaining what your object means to you. Place your object and card in the ice tray. (Use the Overflow jar if the ice trays are full). Return the next day (Monday–Friday) to witness the ice melt and water collected. Visit often. When the seedlings are ready, consider taking one with you.

MA+P PhD student David Kelley's exhibition Our Abyssal Kin, at ArtCenter's Williamson Gallery, has been extended through January 31, 2026 with a special closing event!

Stray Dog Revisited
January 31, 2026, 3-5pm

Join artists Patty Chang and David Kelley for a special screening of Stray Dog Hydrophobia, accompanied by a new musical score. Featuring composer Yasna Yamaoka Vismale’s ethereal vocals, Afro-Jamaican drum rhythms, free jazz, West African influences, and Maroon music, the soundtrack was recorded live during a recent performance at LACMA.

PhD alum Behnaz Farahi is currently exhibiting work as part of the group exhibition “Mother Tongue” at The Friday Gallery in downtown Los Angeles. The exhibition is centered on the question: What does it mean to speak the language of power?

Behnaz’s contribution is an installation titled “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Building on the well-known essay by Gayatri Spivak of the same title and inspired by the historical masks worn by the Bandari women from southern Iran, the project reimagines the right to opacity and at the same time explores new forms of subversive communication as the eyelashes embedded in a mask begin to exchange messages using AI-generated Morse code.

The project exemplifies Behnaz’s interest in wearable technology and its relationship to power, concepts that she explores in her current role as an Assistant Professor at the MIT Media Lab, where she leads the Critical Matter Research Group.

The 2026 Eco Media Festival invites students to submit short films and media art focused on climate change, sustainability, environmental justice, energy, science, life on Earth, and hope.

Event Details Here

Congratulations to MA+P alum Kyle Ang ('22) on the publication of Tiger Tea Zine, Volume 2!

Tiger Tea Zine is a community journal exploring Asian identity, mental health, and what it means to be human beyond stereotypes and surface-level narratives. In Vol. 1, we wrote about what it means to be Asian and human. This time, we ask, What does it mean to be enough?

Tiger Tea exists to challenge the way mental health conversations are dismissed, avoided or carried alone. Like tea, stories are meant to be shared, and like tigers, our stories are as unique as their stripes. Despite our individual stories, we're united in our humanness — our longing to be seen, to be heard, and to belong as we are.

PhD student Ellie Schmidt and PhD Alum Aroussiak Gabrielian will be featured as part of First Hour: experiments on common ground, a Supercollider event at the David Horvitz Garden in Los Angeles.

Saturday, September 27, 2025 @ 5 - 9pm
David Horvitz’ 7th Ave Garden
1911 7th Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90018

Artists: Aroussiak Gabrielian, Devin Wilson, Ellie Schmidt, Ina Chen, Nat Decker, Patricía Lino, Sadia Quddus, Whisper
Curated By: Marcela Vieira

First Hour: experiments on common ground is an activation in David Horovitz’ 7th Ave Garden by members of Supercollider 2025 SciArt Ambassador Cohort and friends. The space is activated with sculptures, performances, and idiosyncratic interventions—both virtual and real—that simulate fictional scenes governed by unreal logics. It is a situation similar to what we experience when entering a new stage of a video game. As we step into the space we may find ourselves wondering: what is happening here? What is the code, the language, the way to interact with these works? Who are these figures? Since understanding takes time, perhaps we will be left only with impressions, rather than with clear answers to our questions.

MA+P undergraduate alum Bo Kim will open their first solo exhibition, BO KIM: BURN, at the Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum in Long Beach on September 11, 2025. The show is on view through Sept 18, with a celebration event 9/18 6-8pm.

iMAP student and ONE Archives artist-in-residence Halo Starling presents Fairy Prince, an exhibition of new work based on research at ONE on the Radical Faeries, particularly the New York Radical Faeries Collection and the Harry Hay Papers. The radical faeries are a loosely affiliated worldwide network and counter-cultural movement seeking to redefine queer consciousness through secular spirituality and ecology. Projects in the exhibition will include hand-crafted textile art, collage films, cyanotypes, an installation, and a zine. The show opens on Friday, June 13, 6:00 – 9:00 p.m. and will be on view throughout the summer at the ONE Archives at the USC Libraries, 909 West Adams Boulevard.

Learn more here.

The Media Arts + Practice program, along with AIMS (AI for Media & Storytelling), Flux, and Logan, present Flux Festival, November 20-23, 2024. The event offers a showcase of emerging forms of storytelling, with an emphasis on AI and its impact on contemporary cinema. Through presentations, performances, conversations, and screenings, Flux Festival offers an opportunity to gather and share ideas about the shifting nature of storytelling in a computational culture. Events will take place in the School of Cinematic Arts, the Hammer Museum, the Audrey Irmas Pavilion, and online. The festival is free to the USC community by using the code AIMS2024 at checkout on Eventbrite.

Learn more here.

Three iMAP PhD candidates – David de Rozas, Halo Starling, and Michelle Salinas Wamungu – were among the five USC graduate students named Summer 2024 Sustainability Fellows earlier this year. Established in 2023, the Summer Primary Source Research Fellowships on Sustainability encourages student engagement with library collections by supporting public-facing research at the intersection of history, gender studies, and sustainability studies. Under the auspices of the fellowship, David conducted research on the history of urban transformation in downtown Los Angeles in support of a broader investigation into the social and environmental impacts of the Downtown Los Angeles 2040 redevelopment plan. Halo explored the ONE Archives’ Harry Hay papers to investigate how Hay’s communist principles informed his role in establishing the Radical Faeries movement. And Michelle conducted research on artistic responses to environmental racism and climate change. Watch for the results of this research in exhibitions and other forms in the coming year!

Read more here.

USC Media Arts + Practice invites you to join us on the evening of April 30 for ALGORHYTHMS: IDENTITIES IN MOTION, an exhibition of thesis projects created by senior undergraduate students in the Media Arts + Practice BA program. These projects integrate research across multiple fields and together represent a holistic view of the emerging media landscape.

Open to the public. No RSVP required.

Opening Event:
April 30, 2024
5:00 pm: Screenings in SCI 106
6:15 pm: Exhibition in Stages 3 + 4

Gallery Hours:
May 1-2, 10am - 5pm
May 3, 10am - 1pm
Stages 3 + 4

Location:
USC School of Cinematic Arts
3470 McClintock Avenue (SCI 106) and
900 West 34th Street (Stages 3+4)
Los Angeles, CA 90089

PhD student David Kelley and his partner, Patty Chang, will screen their work "Overburden" this fall at e-flux in New York.

Read more here.

USC Media Arts + Practice invites you to join us on the evening of April 24th for the opening reception of iMAPPENING 2023.

iMAPPENING is the year-end showcase of media art projects created by students in the interdisciplinary Media Arts + Practice PhD program in the School of Cinematic Arts at USC. This year’s projects ask profound questions about the role of emerging media forms in contemporary culture with attention to harmful datasets and the encoding of antiblack and anti-queer, trans, and nonbinary life. The projects reflect on the evanescence of history and memory, offer new modes of witnessing and being, and consider our engagement with how we know and how we die. We meet the avatar of a shaman-bride, encounter a significant storefront in Boyle Heights, and learn about an historic vigil dedicated to peace.

Open to the public. No RSVP required.

Opening Event:
April 24, 2023
5:00 pm

Gallery Hours:
April 25-27, 2023
10:00 am - 5:00 pm

Location:
USC School of Cinematic Arts
900 West 34th Street (SCA Stage 4)
Los Angeles, CA 90089

PhD candidate Juri Hwang has received a third round of funding from Arts in Action for Here, My Voice, an arts-based intervention project that provides experimental voice lessons hard-of-hearing persons.

Read more about the project here.

PhD doctoral candidate Triton Mobley will present "Keloid Archives" at Soloway Gallery this fall. The work for this gallery show is a culmination of 18 months of studio research that engages with our relationship to the technologies we depend on to document and archive our digital selves. The collection of works distills lived experiences of Blackness—aiming to retrieve the digitized fragments that are inconvenient to the systems of capture—assembled and staged for reexamination.

See Triton's portfolio here.

MA+P undergraduate student Dani Takahashi was selected as the recipient of the 2022 Hedy Lamarr Achievement Award for Emerging Leaders in Entertainment Technology.

Read the story here.

What Am I Doing Here?, a collection of 17 short films from MA+P faculty member Jeanne Jo, is currently on view at the Southern Utah Museum of Art.

Read more here.

Score for Here, a new artist commission from Jimena Sarno which will be activated at Los Angeles State Historic Park from May 7 – August 31, 2022, is a site-specific sonic experience using modified field recordings and samples composed through geolocation. The piece invites Los Angeles State Historic Park visitors to compose sound in real time as they navigate the park, and will be available through a free downloadable phone app.

Learn more here.

An interview with Media Arts and Practice student, Katie Luo.

Read the full interview here.

An interview with Media Arts and Practice student, Mo Chuang.

Read the full interview here.

Curtis Tamm was recipient of the ACE-Nikaido fellowship in Summer 2021. He discussed his research and experience with the fellowship.

Congratulations to Jyn Arro (BA '20) on the publication of her first volume of poetry, "Book of Mirrors."

Arro writes, "Book of Mirrors is a collection of poetry and prose about pain and sorrow; change and healing; love and sensuality; pride and femininity; resilience and power. Through four parts it is my wish that you see yourself reflected in these words, and know that the person in the mirror is not so wrong or hideous as distortions would have us believe."

Arro's works often explore themes of spirituality, beauty, femininity, queerness, and the nuances and complexities of her mixed-indigenous, Xicana ancestry. When she is not exploring expression and entertaining her curiosity, she is recording the A Poetic Mess podcast, playing video games, or growing her divination deck collection.

Find more of Arro's work here.

An interview with Media Arts and Practice student, Ethan Kurzrock.

Read the full interview here.

PhD student Emilia Yang will showcase her project AMA Constructing Memory at the Human Rights Film Festival in Berlin as part of their curated exhibition "The Art of Change." The project is an Interactive Art Book about the memories of the victims of state violence in Nicaragua. Learn more here.

Yang's project Love and Remembrance, a VR experience about the affective landscapes of the protests and the right to memory, was also selected for the Vancouver International Film Festival's Immersed XR Market. Learn more here.

Projects by MA+P undergraduates Katie Chan and Katie Liu were selected by the Processing Foundation as part of the 2021 Google Summer of Code initiative.

Read the announcement here.

We are pleased to announce that MA+P faculty member Dr. Virginia Kuhn has just published a new book entitled "Shaping the Digital Dissertation: Knowledge Production in the Arts and Humanities." Dr. Kuhn serves as both a contributor to the volume, and co-editor with Dr. Anke Finger of the University of Connecticut.

Read more, from Open Book Publishers

An interview with Media Arts and Practice alumnus, Michael Kozlowski.

Read the full interview here.

Created by Behnaz Farahi (PhD '20), these masks are meant to empower women to communicate on their own terms by sidestepping the male gaze.

Read the full story here.

Media is just for consumption, right? But what if we told you that media can be used to envision a better future for humanity? This is what is on the agenda of Karl Baumann (PhD ’18).

Read the full interview here.

PhD student David Kelley will be showing "Oversound," a new video projection, at Sound Pedro 2026.

The project features a live film score performance by composer, musician and USC Thornton School of Music alum Kayla McIntyre .Sound Pedro 2026: Tin-
June 6 at 7-10 pm
Angels Gate Park in San Pedro

Riffing on the traditional ten-year anniversary gift, Tin–, soundpedro2026 marks a decade of experiments, sonic reflections, and sensory replays.

From the ringing edge of tinnitus to tolling tintinnabulations, this year’s theme echoes the passage of time, the persistence of sound, and the decaying thresholds between signal and noise.

On May 23, MA+P professor Kim Zumpfe and MA+P alumnus/professor Luke Quezada will open their collaborative exhibit, Ground Truthing, at Reisig + Taylor Contemporary. We hope to see there! On view through June 27, 2026.

Ground Truthing explores the origins and development of photogrammetry and GPS imaging related to domestic home objects, often used for comfort and to elevate character and delight in home spaces.

This work provides experimental interactive compositions related to concepts of home and place that includes: 3D models and audio field recordings from site visits to the Casa Grande Test Range, related historical and archival images, aerial satellite imaging, declassified government documents, and home decorations. The works created for this exhibition enact a meditation on perceptual distortions of the lived-on surface of the earth.

The term “ground truthing” was used by NASA and the military to describe observational data of the earth’s surface to develop certainties about location, originally developed as a technique for space exploration and reconnaissance missions.

The Arizona desert holds an array of over 250 large concrete Maltese-shaped crosses that can still be viewed on GPS mapping systems. These are the Casa Grande Corona Photogrammetric Test Range, once used to calibrate satellite technology in the 1960’s. This infrastructure allowed engineers to lay a groundwork for GPS, now considered a public good.

Ground Truthing poetically considers navigation and positioning embedded in GPS and coordinated satellite systems in relationship to social imaginations of the constructs of home base.

USC Media Arts + Practice invites you to join us April 23-30 for iMAPPENING 2026.

iMappening is a yearly exhibition of experimental works-in-progress from the interdisciplinary Media Arts + Practice PhD program, including film, video, installation, animation, performance, generative AI, sound, and other media.

Open to the public. No RSVP required.

Exhibition Reception
April 23
Soundstage 4 + SCA Gallery
5:00 pm

Screening Program
April 29
SCA 110
6:00 pm

Exhibition Gallery Hours
April 24-30
(weekdays only)
Soundstage 4 + SCA Gallery
10:00 am - 6:00 pm

Location
USC School of Cinematic Arts
900 W 34th St
Los Angeles, CA 90089

This program is open to all eligible individuals. The Division of Media Arts and Practice (MA+P) operates all of its programs and activities consistent with the University’s Notice of Non-Discrimination.

Congrats to MA+P student Franklin Lam on winning 4 Silver Awards at the 2026 Los Angeles Student ADDYs! This recognition is awarded by the American Advertising Federation's Los Angeles chapter.

Franklin was awarded for two of his recent projects, "One City. One Game." and "Voraz".

On Feb 28, Spectra Studio and Ripspace will co-host Spectra Synthesis, a media and emergent technologies festival.

The event will feature work from MA+P professor Qianqian Ye, PhD student Maisa Imamovic, and undergraduate alumnus John Miranda, as well as many other amazing artists, theorists and practitioners!

Now on display in the Signal + Noise Gallery in our SCI Building Lobby:

Artificial Wild Dream is an exploration of nature on the brink of extinction as seen through machine learning in a project created by Ronen Tanchum, an artist working with generative systems, immersive environments, and interactive technologies. The 50-minute project was generated using custom software, a bespoke AI model, TouchDesigner, and ComfyUI, and invites viewers to see the world through a machine’s interpretation of it, reflecting a world that the machine “remembers” but has never experienced.

Tanchum’s body of work includes projects that integrate robotics, artificial intelligence, sensors, and real-time algorithms to construct evolving perceptual environments. His work moves between digital and physical realms, treating technology as way to surface behavioral patterns, environmental systems, and emotional response.

PhD alum Romi Ron Morrison ( @elegantcollisions ) recently presented a special live performance of a new piece, 𝘚𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘉𝘰𝘰𝘬: 𝘘𝘶𝘰𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘋𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘳𝘦.

𝘚𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘉𝘰𝘰𝘬: 𝘘𝘶𝘰𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘋𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘳𝘦 is a performance piece inspired by research on the graphic scores, personal life, and musical patterns of the late composer Julius Eastman. The title 𝘚𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘉𝘰𝘰𝘬 gestures toward Eastman’s infamous dispute with the minimalist composer John Cage. Eastman performed an iteration of Cage’s canonical work 𝘚𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘉𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘴 with the S.E.M. Ensemble at The University of Buffalo in 1975—a performance that was deemed inflammatory for its use of nudity and its emphasis on queer desire. The performance and its reception marked a pivotal turning point in the artist’s career: from then on, Eastman’s identity as both Black and queer became a critical focus in his work, expressed in forthcoming compositions like 𝘌𝘷𝘪𝘭 𝘕, 𝘊𝘳𝘢𝘻𝘺 𝘕, and 𝘎𝘢𝘺 𝘎𝘶𝘦𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘢 (all 1979).

𝘚𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘉𝘰𝘰𝘬 is presented in partnership with the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Mythscience, and 2220, and organized in conjunction with the exhibition 𝘛𝘰𝘰 𝘍𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘛𝘰 𝘚𝘪𝘯𝘨, curated by Hugo Cervantes.

MA+P PhD student Zeynep Abes is currently exhibiting work as part of "A Tender Excavation" at the Luckman Fine Arts Complex at Cal State LA

Curated by Selene Preciado and presented by Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), A Tender Excavation "approaches research-based artistic practices through propositions of alternative histories, bringing together a group of artists who work with historical and familial photographic archives as a point of departure to construct new narratives and elicit transformation."

"The works selected for the exhibition originate from personal, familial, or historical photographic archives, recontextualized through installation, collage, painting, film, video, sculpture, and mixed media. Artworks reimagine and reconnect lost fragments to speak about personal and collective resilience, constructing new possibilities for an interconnected futurity. Several pieces in the exhibition share aesthetics of abstraction, layered distortion, glitch, or incompleteness, signaling how loss, damage, or decay of the photographic object can be poetic metaphors for the transmission of history and memory as an act of self- and collective preservation."

PhD student Michelle Salinas Wamungu will be exhibiting as part of the exhibition Concrete Hope at The Pete and Susan Barrett Art Gallery at Santa Monica College.

Curated by Erika Hirugami (CuratorLove) as part of the Foto Socal project, Concrete Hope "speak[s] to the intricacies and complexities of belonging to a community of individuals united aesthetically by culture, transcending national boundaries. Concrete Hope features equal parts piñatas, abuelitas, cholos, tatuajes, virgencitas, mercados,rosarios, metates, petates, buganvilias, escapularios, veladoras, primas, primos, letreros, gente de nuestra comunidad, gallos, emblemas nacionales, ventanales, ladrillos, sobadores, pirámides, manteles, familia y fotografías."

"Concrete Hope’s aesthetic axis is the celebration of all things Brown, Mexican-American, Nepantlera, Mestiza, Indigenous, Chicanx, Mexican-Irish, Afro-Mexicana, Chicano, Latine, Undocumented, Oaxaqueñe, Yaqui, Migrant, Guatemalan-Mexican, Salvadoran, Mexipino (Mexican-Filipino), Chapin, Immigrant, Undoc+, and Jaxican (Japanese-Mexican), et. al., which stands as a reflection of self-affirmation of the lived experiences of the complex brown community in Southern California. Concrete Hope brings together thirty-eight emergent photographers and lens-based artists from Southern California who explore an assortment of installation media as materiality for the photographic depictions."

Read more about the exhibit here.

Katrina Meng (MA+P BA '24) is currently an M.S. Speech-Language Pathology student at @keckschoolusc, where she is applying her storytelling and media design skills to the medical field. With colleague Marilyn Sun, she designed and produced Cranial Connect! a competitive card-matching game for future healthcare workers and educators studying the brain.

The game will help prospective speech-language pathologists understand how the cranial nerves connect to different activities of daily living, and most importantly, speech and swallow functions essential for patients’ quality of life.

Recent Media Arts + Practice PhD program graduate Sarah Ciston was recently awarded the prestigious S+T+ARTS Grand Prize in Artistic Exploration presented by the Linz-based media arts organization Ars Electronica for her project titled AI War Cloud Database. The project is in keeping with the creative/critical hybridity that characterizes the iMAP PhD program as it shows how commonly used AI systems are being deployed in war­fare – automatically and with serious consequences for civilians. To celebrate the award, the project is being showcased at the 2025 Ars Electronica show, the preeminent showcase of media art in the world

*Photo of Sarah by Paige Zangoglia

Read prize announcement here.

This summer, MA+P PhD students Zeynep Abes and Andrea Kim traveled to Seoul as presenters for ISEA2025, the 30th International Symposium on Electronic/Emerging Art.

Andrea gave an artist talk titled "Multi-Agent Fabulation in the House of MU," about world building for narrative media, drawing from Korean mythologies and folk culture.

Zeynep presented a paper for ISEA's Summit on New Media Art Archiving. "Futures Forgotten: Rhizomatic Archiving of Immersive Memories" examines rhizomatic archival structures, drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of decentralized, interconnected knowledge as a solution for preserving XR and its complex histories.

Over the recent fall break, undergraduate students in the IMAX: The Art and Practice of Giant Screen Cinema course traveled to the Alabama Hills National Scenic Area outside Lone Pine for a 4-day workshop where they learned how to compose images for the giant screen, operate the IMAX MSM film camera, and film with the ARRI Alexa LF digital cinema camera. Students were guided by legendary director of photography Sean Phillips, IMAX camera technician Scott (Smitty) Smith, and MA+P professor Matt Scott. The work captured over the weekend will be screened at IMAX Headquarters in Playa Vista on November 4, where students will meet members of the IMAX team and tour the extraordinary IMAX facility.

Photo: A student operates the IMAX film camera to capture the USC student group sitting under Mobius Arch.

MA+P PhD alum Triton Mobley ('23) talks to SCA about his 2024 exhibition Coloured.Aesthetica.

Watch video here.

Co-created and produced by SCA professor Michael Bodie and Dramatic Arts professor Paula Cizmar, Sacrifice Zone: Los Angeles is an immersive and interactive environmental justice experience merging exhibition, performance, and activism.

Through multimedia-enriched documentary theatre and film storytelling, SZLA sheds light on the damaging effects of decades of industrial pollution on South Los Angeles communities by transforming the Otis Booth Pavilion at the Natural History Museum into a home along the I-710 Corridor. Attendees will have the freedom to meet the family and explore the household in the order of their choosing, going at their own pace while learning about the challenges of living in “sacrifice zones” — the places in our city devastated by ongoing environmental pollution.

Written, designed, and performed by current and former USC students and faculty, Sacrifice Zone: Los Angeles will run from January 13 - 28, 2024.

Read USC News article here.

Learn more about the project here.

Sunday, October 15, 2023 at 2 p.m.
USC Brain and Creativity Institute's Cammilleri Hall (BCI)

As the culmination of three year doctoral research, Media Arts and Practice PhD candidate Juri Hwang presents a public event with USC’s Arts in Action and the Los Angeles Chapter of Hearing Loss Association of America: Here My Voice - Celebrating the Power of Voice with Hard-of-Hearing Community. Featuring vocal performances by hard-of-hearing participants, this event celebrates the intensive collaborative work of the participants of the Here, My Voice project, which responds to the challenges of hard-of-hearing people to make their voices heard and use them for creative expression. The performances will be followed by a conversation with performers and their voice teacher partners about their innovative, interdisciplinary, and transformative collaborations.

More information + RSVP

"Body of Mine," an immersive piece by Cameron Kostopoulos, premiered at SXSW 2023 and won the Special Jury Award in the XR Experience category. The festival jurors called the project "a beautifully crafted virtual reality experience that shows how VR can provide a safe space for understanding, reflection, and connection when a safe space in the real world is hard to find."

Cameron, a 2022 graduate of the Film and Television Production major and the Future Cinema Minor, worked on this project as part of his IML 481: Mixed Realities course, taught by Professor Scott Fisher. Fellow MA+P students Nali Mandi (MA+P '22) and Luke Greenwood (MA+P '23) are credited as 3D artists for the project.

Read the announcement here.

Kumi James writes about living out Black queer collective fantasies and inventing a collective path and space. (Photo by Sam Hood)

Read the article here.

In this artist talk, PhD student Andrea Kim will present "Origin of Somu," a chapter of an ongoing transmedia series. Kim will read "Origin of Somu" in webXR and discuss how digital tools interface with creativity, techno-culture, and the human-machine relationship.

Learn more about the event here.

Human Resources LA will host an exhibition of work from PhD student Fidelia Lam on July 23-31, 2022.

New seed. XXXXXX. New seed. XXXXXX. grapples with the affective and aesthetic legacies of empire and colonialism as they continue to shape the racial architectures of Asian diasporic femme subjectivities. The exhibition features new multimedia works that speak to, with, and nearby speculative ancestral figures, drawing on Anne Anlin Cheng’s theory of ornamentalism to create sites for grieving, honoring, and queering modes of synthetic personhood. Playing with recursive processes and speculative rituals, the pieces arrive in formations of plastics, light, and digital technologies to meditate on the racializations of matter and inter-textual modes of being.

Opening: July 23, 2022, 7-10pm
On View: Wed-Sun 12-6pm, July 23-31
Exhibition walkthroughs available by appointment.

View gallery announcement here.

PhD alum Emilia Yang will be joining the faculty in Fall 2022 at the University of Michigan's Stamps School of Art and Design. Yang will focus on Anti-Racism by Design as a central area for research/​creative work, and will join colleagues at the U‑M School of Information and the Ford School of Public Policy to form the Racial Justice & Technology cluster.

Read the story here.

USC Media Arts + Practice invites you to join us on the evening of May 6 for PUNCTORIUM, an exhibition of thesis projects created by senior undergraduate students in the BA in Media Arts + Practice and the Honors in Multimedia Scholarship program. These projects integrate research across multiple fields and together represent a holistic view of the emerging media landscape.

Open to the public. No RSVP required.

Opening Event:
May 6, 2022
4​:00 pm: Screenings in SCI 106
5:00 pm: Exhibition in Stages 3 + 4

Gallery Hours:
May 9-10, 2022
10:00 am - 5:00 pm
Stages 3 + 4

Location:
USC School of Cinematic Arts
3470 McClintock Avenue (SCI 106)
900 West 34th Street (Stages 3 + 4)
Los Angeles, CA 90089

Peabody Awards honors excellence in storytelling that reflects the social issues and the emerging voices of our day. The Board of Jurors recently announced PhD Alum Nonny de la Peña as one of four Special Awardees that have achieved outstanding feats in storytelling across interactive, immersive and new media categories. The distinguished “Legacy class” of winners whose mediums altogether span Virtual and Augmented Reality, Gaming, Interactive Journalism, Social Video, Interactive Documentary, Transmedia Storytelling, and more, demonstrate the depth of these digital formats and emphasize the foundational standards for future award recipients.

Read more here.

MA+P faculty member Alex McDowell and PhD alumnus Brian Cantrell have co-authored a paper on the new design language they are developing as part of their collaborative project "World in a Cell."

Read the paper here.

An interview with Media Arts and Practice alumnus, David Viramontes.

Read the full interview here.

An interview with Media Arts and Practice alumna, Carolyn Diloreto.

Read the full interview here.

Virginia Kuhn talked with the LA Times about the Lil Nax X’s new video “That’s What I Want” and radical queerness.

Read the story here.

PhD student Benjamin Nicholson's performance, "Deathless and Taxless: A Corporate Exorcism," was featured in the 2021 Hollywood Fringe Festival.

Learn more here.

MA+P adjunct faculty member Ashley York is one of nine filmmakers selected by the Smithsonian for the "Futures We Dream" film showcase. This showcase, part of the upcoming "FUTURES" exhibition, will present uplifting visions of communities across the U.S. from award-winning independent filmmakers.

Read the full announcement here.

Laila Shareen Sakr (PhD '15) and Susana Ruiz (PhD '15) received an extension grant from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) for their project "Arab Data Bodies: Social Media in Mixed Reality." The ACLS Digital Extension Grant program supports digitally based research projects in all disciplines of the humanities and humanities-related social sciences.

Read the grant announcement here.

USC students create the digital future in a new interactive building.

Read the full story here.

While its physical location was closed by the combined impact of government reprisals and the global pandemic, museum director Emilia Yang Rappaccioli (PhD '21) discusses how the museum lives on as a digital space.

Read the full story here.

In the summer of 2016, three USC scholars gathered at an 18th-century castle in Austria to teach 70 college students from around the globe how to dream about the future. The Salzburg Global Seminar likely qualifies as the most glamorous venue to host workshop leaders Henry Jenkins, Sangita Shresthova and Gabriel Peters-Lazaro, but it's only one of many places where the trio has championed the practice of "civic imagination" through world-building exercises. Additional to the workshops they've run over the past eight years, Jenkins, Shresthova and Peter-Lazaro have produced two recent books filled with fresh thinking about media activism.

Read the full story here.