What was the inspiration behind the making of this short film?
Initially, the film “Fastidiosa” was produced for another class, IML288 - Critical Thinking and Procedural Media, from media arts and practice. It’s the introduction to creative coding and people mostly learn about processing. It’s a kind of sub-library based on JavaScript that’s mostly used for visual creative coding.
In general, that short film is about a kind of plant epidemic that’s caused by a kind of bacteria called Xylella fastidiosa, spread mostly in southern Italy’s Puglia areas. My inspiration for the topic came from a photo book that I found two years ago, also called “Fastidiosa”. It’s just composed mostly of archival photos, research and field research, so it’s a really beautiful collection. Based on that collection, I used the photos from them to produce my short film “Fastidiosa” and the meaning of it is mostly about calling for the attention of that kind of topic of how the plant can also have epidemics and how we can help them.
Another point I want to highlight is how plant culture has a really deep relationship with human culture, especially in southern Italy. For instance, the farmer there relies heavily on the production of olive trees, olive oils and related products. When trees are getting infected, humans are also getting infected. So that is a really interesting relationship.
Who are the artists or architects that inspired you, and what media trends do you follow?
Olafur Eliasson! He has been my favorite artist of all time. He is an artist who focuses on environmentalism through artistic installations. He did paintings, installations, projections; he also collaborated with Sebastian Behmann to make some really fascinating building projects such as the Kirk Kapital’s corporate headquarter located in Denmark. I was very inspired by him. So I went into USC and took architecture and have a minor inside specialization.
What intrigues me the most is spatial curation—how artists use virtual space to create different experiences for people inside of it. Because that’s the intersection point of both architecture, which is more specialized, and media arts, which focuses on storytelling across different mediums. In “Fastidiosa,” the short film that I made, it isn’t a typical virtual city space because my initial inspiration was to make a digital storybook, but in a more elegant way. I did try to curate a journey in five minutes. And I’m personally really satisfied with the end result.
You are a double major in Bachelor of Science in Architectural Studies and a Bachelor of Art in Media Arts + Practice at USC. How did you arrive at this decision? How do you find that combining the two curricula gives you what you want for your education at USC?
Initially, I enrolled as an Architecture major with a minor in Science Visualization. It was a really small, cross-interdisciplinary minor between the animation department at SCA and Viterbi. I started with the minor and discovered that I really like exploring science and visualization through different media. Then in my third year, I turned my minor, Science Visualization, into my co-major, Media Arts and Practice. I officially began my journey as a double major student at USC and I found it to be really pleasing to me, because I see doing media artwork as a kind of relaxation or taking a break from architecture studio. I can explore some of the interests that I don’t really have a chance to explore in architecture and study them in the arts. When I was in architecture, we studied a lot about materials, like physics and materiality. One of the materials that I was really interested in was wood. So I combined my interest in wood and Fastidiosa and just had a lot of exploration about them in my creative coding class. I’m really interested in a more logical and creative representation of science.
Many Architecture major students find themselves pressed for time through the 5-year program. You took a gap year from USC. What motivated that choice and how was that experience?
I found myself in that year and it really was fantastic! In the spring semester of my third year, I continued taking all the [architecture] courses but just not architecture studio, which gave me a lot of freedom and time to explore. I started to take required courses in Media Arts like introduction to graphic design. I took Languages of Digital Media (IML 201) and learned a lot about video editing. Last year, I took an Architecture elective ARCH599 - BIODESIGN: Animal Architecture, it was a course of a more media or perspective. We studied the nesting logic of birds and made sculptures and installations about that. We collaborated with USC Visions and Voices for an installation about the LA River and the vanishing birds in the LA area. Then in my senior year fall, I did a sonic art course, created projects on the sound of earthquakes and the sound of whales in Adobe Audition. In my media arts studio course about board game design, we produced a board game about the human organs and it’s a really interesting project because personally, I’ve been really fascinated about not only the ecosystem but human biology as well. So that’s one of my favorite projects. It is set in the hospital in a futuristic world. There are four surgeons throughout them who are human beings. One of them is a cyber human being and there’s a patient lying on his back. And for humans, their goal is to treat the sick patients, but the cyber one is trying to turn the sick into robots. My role was the designer of the game board, then also the arts producer for the whole game.
You are also working with the USC Landscape Futures Lab. What drove you to get involved and what kind of projects are you working on?
The professor of the animal architecture course is the leader of the lab. She is an SCA Media Arts and Practice PhD student and she’s currently teaching landscape architecture as well. I deeply resonated with her because I am also doing two degrees. We were working on a project about the artificial production of kelp tech. Now, humans are mostly growing kelp in plastic tubes, which is not so eco-friendly and kind of expensive. So our lab looks for more eco-friendly and cheaper alternatives. In my role as a 3D-modeling student worker, I mostly used Rhino and Grasshopper to model the way the sea kelp could form and translate the research into the design. I’m also currently creating diagrams to better explain the design to research groups or audiences who have never learned about this topic before. We are hoping to have our exhibition about our current findings and design by this May.
Artistically, what are some of the mediums or projects that you’re excited to start or continue?
I want to learn more about coding and TouchDesigner, which is more of a spatial coding direction as well. Another project in my web coding classes is a web page design project about the Three Gorges Dam in China and I’m using 10 pages of HTML to talk about the advantages and the disadvantages of that dam from the perspective of a drop of water in the Yangtze River. So, it’s a story of you as a drop of water, floating through a river. If you get trapped, then you see, maybe the human villages and how they’re being developed, or being moved to other places because of the development of the dam.
Where do you see yourself post-graduation?
I want to start with a career as an architect, then explore my interests through media arts, because life as a professional media artist doesn’t really fit with my personality. I want to have at least one career related to architecture.
Editor’s Note: some quotes have been edited for clarity.