CalArts proudly presents the culimination of student work from the 2020-2021 academic school year in the Not-a-Festival showcase. Visit a variety of projects from CalArts’ schools, programs, and classes.

Art School Project Archive The CalArts Art School Project Archive documents final student work. The site offers a window into the diverse and vital work our students are producing at CalArts. Launched in May 2021, the Archive currently holds work made from the 2019/20 school year to today.

ry b School of Theater, Lighting Design, MFA3 Color’s Queer Bent An investigation into the relationship between light/color and queerness. This project draws on a rich history of color used for queer communication, secret expression, and self-identification. CQB 1.0 investigated using colored light to enhance the queerness of an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. CQB […]

Liessa Son School of Dance, Dance, BFA 3 Certain Kinds Delving into the current hierarchical system, this film portrays the characteristics of each class: working, rich, and poor. Rather than being in their shoes, this shows the perspective of observing each class. The observation includes types of movements, facial expressions, and appearance settings, along with […]

Kathleen Fox School of Theater, Interactive Media for Performance, MFA3 To Remember a Friend The year is 2040. A young woman named Jane Watson has been murdered in her apartment. No one knows what happened… but you plan to find out. You play as Whitlock, a rookie detective undergoing an experimental consciousness transfer procedure in […]

CalArts School of Theater Festival 2021: Beyond the Stage CalArts School of Theater Festival 2021: Beyond the Stage presents a wide variety of original, contemporary, and classic work developed by students, faculty, and guest artists across multiple theater disciplines. The school-wide event runs May 4-14, 2021. Breaking with the tradition of in-person liveness, artists have […]

XDP Portfolio Review Housed in the School of Theater, Experience Design and Production (XDP) converges studies in narrative, immersion, environments, behavior, dramaturgy, fabrication and interactivity. Students approach the creation of projects and experiences from a diversity of perspectives, wrapped around a core design process that prizes experimentation, strong visual communication, rigorous iteration, and the ability […]

Jing Dong School of Art, Art and Technology, MFA2 The hidden space What is the aesthetics of AI? If AI/ML is poetic? With those questions, I have an interest in exploring the relationship between AI, Art and body movement. AI acts as an extension of human’s consciousness, can they produce poetic and sensation of beauty? […]

Abigail Whitman School of Music, VoiceArts, MFA 1 “Stripsody” in Quarantine This piece is a reimagining of “Stripsody” by Cathy Berberian. The original work explores the idea of a radioshow host, who’s job is to create all the sounds of the cartoon characters depicted in the score. Today, of course, we have television, so a […]

Lilly Wylde School of Dance, Dance, BFA 3 Alien Boy “Alien Boy” is about my feeling of not being able to fit into society. How I always feel out of place and wrong for existing. The film attempts to show my expansive imagination and overall show what it’s like to be inside my mind. It’s […]

Jennie Park Interschool Schools of Art and Critical Studies, Art and Creative Writing, MFA 2   And/Or What can we learn from the fact that litmus papers, as binary indicators, are able to change color due to lichens, which are symbiotic organisms? How can the “and/or” connoted by litmus paper — red and blue in […]

Greg Lewis School of Music, Jazz Studies/Composition, MFA 2 How Can I Trust Truth? How Can I Trust Truth?’ is a multi-media collaboration between drummer/composer Greg Lewis and visual artist Gage Winthrop. Musically, it deals with elements of through-composed material, improvisation and ‘chance’ music. Through the use of both electronic and acoustic instruments, this composition […]

Max Jaffe School of Music, Music Technology, MFA2 Motus Solo performance piece for electroacoustic drum kit with Sensory Percussion and signal processing. Additional visual processing done using TouchDesigner networks. Speech audio is from Steny Hoyer (D-MD) on the floor of the U.S. House Of Representatives, January 13, 2021. The title refers to the Latin word […]

Sam Wells School of Music, Performer/Composer, DMA polymyth “polymyth 1” was premiered on Episode 85 of Metropolis Ensemble’s House Music video series. “Composer and Trumpeter Sam Wells first moved to Los Angeles 18 months ago. It was there that he began to immerse himself in desert ecology, exploring the vast, dusty landscape of the Mojave […]

Chris Lyric School of Music, ExPop, BFA 1 Carpe Diem Carpe Diem was written and produced while high as my hopes with some awesome people. I hope the song makes you feel energized. I hope it makes you feel empowered. And I hope it makes you love your friends all the more.  Collaborators: Randy Vo, […]

Steve Weir School of Art, Alumnx Trainviews Trainviews are point-of-view photographs taken from a commuter train running along the Puget Sound from Mukilteo to Seattle