‘Curiosity, Creativity And Connection’: Faculty And Students Share Their Research And Creative Works During Annual Symposium

Faculty and students in the Texas A&M College of Performance, Visualization and Fine Arts presented a broad spectrum of research during the fourth-annual Research and Creative Works Day.

The spring symposium was held Feb. 9 at the Rudder Complex, and included faculty presentations and performances, roundtable discussions, graduate student presentations and a keynote speech.

Jinsil Hwaryoung Seo, Ph.D., associate dean for research and creative works, said the event’s strength is its interdisciplinary nature. The goal is to celebrate the collaborations that define the college, she said.

“It is about curiosity, creativity and connection,” Seo said. “It is an opportunity to showcase the questions we are asking, the creative works being produced and the collaborative relationships that make all of this possible. We are proud to create space for these ideas to be shared, discussed and celebrated.”

Dean Tim McLaughlin said this event provides the opportunity for faculty and students to recenter and share in the experience and engagement.

“It gives us a chance to step back and say, ‘We are doing important work here, and this is why we are here,’” McLaughlin said. “If you take the day in its totality, you won’t find anything like it, anywhere. This collection of disciplines — and the collection of people and how they go about their work — is something special. It is what makes us stand out.”

Faculty Presentations

Kris Belden-Adams, Ph.D., associate professor in the Performance and Visual Studies program, discussed her research findings of the earliest documented photographer in Texas, known as “Mrs. Davis.” She searched for evidence of the photographer in genealogical databases, business directories and family oral histories.

“These fragments revealed a full name and story for this Texas pioneer: Catherine Trenton Davis was born in Baltimore in 1781,” Belden-Adams said. “My research suggests that the first photographer in Texas was not only a technical pioneer, but also a woman who briefly leveraged the opportunities of the frontier to pursue her own ambitions.”

Michael Bruner, M.F.A., instructional assistant professor in the Visualization program, presented his research on working with bioluminescent plankton, which are plant-like microorganisms. He learned how to grow and raise plankton using glassware, sea water and nutrients. He also studied how they interact with light and captured footage of them that was projected onstage during a performance about climate awareness at Ars Electronica in Austria.

“I found that working with living organisms is a slow process and you can’t rush it,” Bruner said. “They are also incredibly sensitive and can only grow at a certain rate.”

Margaret Wiss, D.P.T., assistant professor in the Dance program, discussed her film project “ode,” which studies collaboration and social spaces. The film features a dance about “third places,” Wiss said, which are spaces for the public to interact that are separate from home (“first places”) or work (“second places”).

The project began with collecting photographs of people sitting on benches in New York spots including Lincoln Center, Central Park and the American Museum of Natural History.

“The conglomerate of individuals on the bench is a key moment in this work that I am creating,” she said. “Where is this intersection of our first places into our third places?”

Alessandro Fadini, D.M.A., assistant professor in the Music program, discussed his research surrounding pianistic listening, which he described as an “intuitive awareness where sound triggers a physical and emotional response.”

He created a gaming application titled “SpaceEars,” which challenges players to identify chords and progressions through various adventures.

“In the game, you find yourself in a stylized Area 51,” Fadini said. “But in this reality, the UFOs aren’t piloted by engines — they are piloted by melodies. It’s an RPG environment where your progress is tied to your ears. You take on quests, interact with a narrative and engage in combat where your weapon is your ability to decode the musical language of the invaders.”

Dinesh Yadav, Ph.D., section chair for Dance, Music and Theatre Performance and associate professor in the Theatre program, discussed his research on analyzing the creative process of handloom weaving as a performance.

Yadav gathered parts of his research from a cooperative society at Chendamangalam Handloom Village in Kerala, India. Handloom weaving is an embodied performance, he said, and noted that the physical space where the material is created is comparable to a stage or performance space.

“In theatre, we talk about invisible labor — the work that enables spectacle but disappears behind it,” Yadav said. “Handloom weaving is the opposite. The labor is fully visible and still erased. We celebrate the textile. We frame it, price it, archive it.”

Performances and Screenings

Faculty members in the Music, Dance and Visualization programs showcased live performances and screenings of projects in Rudder Theatre.

The interdisciplinary “Plastic” featured a video presentation accompanied by a live performance by Virginia Figueiredo, D.M.A., instructional associate professor, who played clarinet; and a dance performed by Wiss, Abby Williams Chin, M.F.A., lecturer, and Jessica Boone, M.F.A., lecturer. Jeff Morris, D.M.A., professor, served as composer of the performance.

Martin Regan, Ph.D., professor, performed “Silent Cry of a Heron” on shakuhachi, alongside Figueiredo, who played clarinet. 

Participants viewed a clip of a Hope Life dance project, which focuses on the Holocaust, with portions filmed on Virtual Production Institute stages at the Texas A&M Fort-Worth campus. The project was created and presented by Carisa Armstrong, M.F.A., associate professor; and Christine Bergeron, Ph.D., academic undergraduate program director for Dance and clinical professor.

Virtual production was also featured in “THAW,” which combines music, dance and visuals shaped by climate data, filmed at the Virtual Production Institute stage in the Langford Architecture Center, Building A. The film was created and presented by Lynn Vartan, D.M.A., associate professor; Stewart Ziff, M.F.A., associate academic graduate program director for Visualization and instructional associate professor; Michael Bruner, M.F.A., instructional assistant professor; and Carolyn Pampalone Rabbers, M.F.A., instructional assistant professor.

The final screening was “Kimboloi (worry beads),” a collaborative video poem that merges climate data with experimental film and animation techniques, presented by Krista Leigh Steinke, M.F.A., assistant professor; Courtney Starrett, M.F.A., associate professor; and Meg Cook, M.F.A., assistant professor.

Keynote Speaker Presentation

Deborah Cullinan, vice president for the arts at Stanford University, shared her insight and experiences with the arts at the university.

She emphasized the essential role of the arts at a university level. She asked the audience to recall what it feels like to be transfixed by a work of art or to be “moved in the collective experience of a piece of theatre or a piece of music.”

“We all know what that feels like,” Cullinan said. “And because we know that art can be transformative, I believe we have an obligation to apply that transformative quality to essential goods whenever we can — to integrate the arts into the infrastructure of our lives.”

Cullinan highlighted opportunities for students to see live art and present their own works.

“The arts fuel a culture of creativity and curiosity,” she said.

Graduate Student Poster Presentations

Several graduate students in the Dance, Visualization and Performance and Visual Studies programs presented detailed posters of their work in the Rudder Exhibit Hall. The posters included highlights of their projects through images, text, graphics and charts.

Nik Aberle, a second-year Master of Fine Arts in Visualization student, presented “Embodied Threshold Phenomena: Translating Scientific Anomalies Into Perceptual Experience.”

Carlos Lopez, a second-year Master of Arts in Performance and Visual Studies student, presented “The Affect Power of Shark Cinematography.”

Grant McGee, a first-year Master of Fine Arts in Dance student, presented “Contemporary Adaptations: Practice-Based Exploration of Phenology, Soundscapes and Ecological Interdependence in the Texas Piney Woods.”

Grace Rogers, a first-year Master of Fine Arts in Dance student, presented “Raising the Standard: Teacher Qualification Practices and Professional Development in Texas Dance Studios.”

Robert Rutherford, a second-year Master of Arts in Performance and Visual Studies student, presented “Koto Chaos: Musical Instruments and Construction as Global Performance.”

Bryn Shellenback, a first-year Master of Science in Visualization student, presented “Automatic UV Unwrapping: Improving the User Experience.”