A big congratulations to media arts seniors Skylor McClellan and Louise Dhuyvetter, who recently presented their Capstone projects to the visual art faculty! While we missed the larger public exhibition which was called off due to COVID-19, the smaller zoom format worked well for these projects, which were both quite personal in nature.
Skylor used a new and cutting-edge design tool for his project. He created a 5 minute narrative animation using Dreams, a game creation, movie creation, and music creation system that runs on PlayStation 4. Dreams is a powerful program that was launched this past February, but Skylor was fortunate to have early access to the game and had been learning it earlier than many others. Skylor was the writer, director, designer, and animator for this piece, which allowed him to work on something that he loves. “I love stories and fictional worlds,” he writes. “I have easily spent more time in fictional worlds than the real one.” Below are some stills from his animation titled “Witness,” in which an alien ship invades planet Earth.
The scope of Louise’s project changed drastically due to COVID-19. Louise was originally planning to create a music video using a full crew and resources from BLC’s production studio. This project is well-suited for her background in vocal performance. But a large group production was no longer possible when the campus closed. While working from home in isolation, Louise photographed a series self-portraits that were also used in the music video as dynamic stills. “Music is very personal to me and to create my own music for the first time I knew my subject matter had to be equally personal,” she writes in her artist statement. “I chose to write the song entitled ‘Boxes’ about my internal struggle with self expression. In order to make things easier for me, I hide parts of myself and only give others what they expect of me. I save the rest of my personality for myself, rarely acting on some of the impulses I have which has left me unhappy and unsure of my self-image.” The resulting photographs recall the seminal work of artist Cindy Sherman.
This year continued the pattern of no two MART capstones being alike. We are consistently thrilled by the ideas of our graduating seniors and are proud to see them creating things, especially during a time like this in which many people are struggling to stay motivated. Great job, seniors! Best of wishes as you move on from BLC!
