ArtsAmplification Grant Awards 2023

PREVIOUS FACULTY WINNERS

ArtsIMPACT Faculty Grant (2023)

Name of Grant Project:  Production Summer Camp
Colleges/units involved: Philip Merrill College of Journalism / PG County K-12

The Philip Merrill College of Journalism is partnering with Prince George’s County Public Schools for a four-week summer camp in 2024. The camp is built around the concept of teaching live (television show and Esports) and field production, as well as post-production and VFX work. Campers are 8-12 grade students and the program’s goal is to get them interested and engaged in the idea of a post-secondary education in production related fields at the University of Maryland after they graduate from high school.

Submitted by Nathan Stevens.

ArtsAMP Faculty Collaboration (2023)

Name of Grant Project: Techno-Futures: Collaborations in Performance, Technology, and Creative Scholarship
Colleges/units involved: Jyana S. Browne, School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures (ARHU) Van Ngoc Tran Nguyen, School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies (ARHU)

The multi-phased collaboration “Techno-Futures: Collaborations in Performance, Technology, and Creative Scholarship” centers cultural production from East Asia and its diasporas to broaden conversations about technology and the arts on our campus and in the English-speaking scholarly and artistic communities. The campus events took place at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center March 7-9, 2024 and featured a film festival with filmmakers from the Asian diaspora, a two-day symposium “Technology in Contemporary East Asian Performance” (in collaboration with Tarryn Chun, University of Notre Dame), and graduate student events, including a publication workshop and programming curated by a graduate student team. The keynote speakers for the symposium were Rossella Ferrari (University of Vienna) and Suk-Young Kim (UCLA).  

Submitted by Jyana S. Browne.

ArtsAMP Collaborative Faculty Grant (2023)

Name of Grant Project: Distant Markers
Colleges/units involved: Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies and Libraries

In this performance based work, African American dancers remain relaxed, almost statue-like, until an audience member/participant picks up and drops a railroad spike into a bucket. The choreography rhythmically and openly explores the toil, tragedy and resistance to the railroad work. After a couple minutes, the dancers rest again, in various tableaux, until someone picks up and drops a spike onto other spikes in the bucket. The dancers then directly gaze at the audience at the sound, and then dance within a chosen improvised framework.

Submitted by Drew Barker.

ArtsAMP Collaborative Faculty Grant (2023)

Name of Grant Project:  Public Art (ARTH262) - Chill Bloom
Colleges/units involved: College of Arts and Humanities; Department of Art History & Archaeology; Art Gallery

In Spring 2023, the twenty-four undergraduate students enrolled in Public Art (ARTH262) successfully released a Request for Proposals for a new public artwork on campus and, at the semester’s end, selected the proposal by Alyssa Imes (MFA ‘22). Her sculpture, Chill Bloom, was installed outside of the Parren J. Mitchell Art-Sociology Building in September and debuted as part of NextNOW Fest (Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center). A large steel sculpture (approximately 9 ft. x 9 ft. x 9 ft.), Chill Bloom is designed in the shape of a flower with curved, hammock-like petals that invite visitors to rest. “College can be stressful at times, and in those times I wished that I had a space in which I could relax and recharge,” Imes explained of her inspiration for the work. “Hammock-like in nature, Chill Bloom references school colors and takes the shape of a tulip in bloom, reflecting early spring and the eagerness of these flowers to be among the first to flower. Just like tulips, college students are eager and ready for a fresh start at their studies and college experience. Chill Bloom is my way of honoring rest and renewal at the University of Maryland.”

Submitted by Abigail McEwen.
Photo Credit: David Andrews.

Other Faculty Winners Include:

Faculty ArtsAMP Winners

“Music and Science Lecture Series”
Irina Muresanu, School of Music
Shihab Shamma, Brain and Behavior Institute

“Commit!”: Theatrical Movement through Motion Capture Technology 
Mollye Bendell, Department of Art
Kate Landeheim, School of Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies 
Cornelia Fermuller, University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies

“Dance2, Part II: Interactive Dance Performance through On-body Wearable Robot and Crowd Participation” 
Huaishu Peng, Computer Science
Adrienne Fang, School of Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies
Jonathan David Martin, Immersive Media Design
Bill Kules, I-School

Faculty ArtsIMPACT Winners

“S Street Salon”
Caitlin Marshall, School of Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies

PREVIOUS STUDENT WINNERS

ArtsAMP Interdisciplinary Graduate Research Grants (2023)

Name of Grant Project: Places Remember Too
Colleges/units involved: Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies, Immersive Media Design, New Works Incubator, African American Digital and Experimental Humanities

This project created an augmented reality experience that walks through the memories of a site-specific location. This video walk captured the sounds and activities of a location at different points in time, and then translated the captured imagery into a 3D environment. The newly interpreted content was then activated by an image or a location-based trigger, and the 3D content would be superimposed on the physical location viewed through a smartphone screen. 

Submitted by Rashonda Lazar.

ArtsAMP Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Research Grant (2023)

Name of Grant Project: Prompt Generation
Colleges/units involved: UMD and Virginia Tech, Institute for Creativity, Arts & Technology (ICAT)

As a result of attending the “a2ru 2023 Emerging Creatives Summit," a prototype for an exhibition that collects responses to prompts was created to engage viewers with the topic of Artificial Intelligence. The exhibition was designed to encourage the audience to participate in responding to individual words or “prompts,” which were sourced from ChatGPT. Individual words were displayed in rotation on a video screen. Exhibition-goers were asked to define the word that was displayed on screen. For example, “define: settlement,” “define: race,” “define: community.” Arts and craft supplies were also provided for exhibition-goers to respond in real time to the prompts. Guests used sticky notes to write their responses and then posted them on two pillars in the center of the room. Additionally, a projection system to display the multiple definitions for all the prompts included in the data set.

Submitted by James Perla.
Photo credit: Rodney Kimbangu.

ArtsImpact Student Grants (2023)

Name of Grant Project: Loasis Magazine
Colleges/units involved: UMD and Howard University

Loasis Magazine, in its inaugural year, is a platform centered around cultivating a strong community and audience in College Park and in social media. Its focus on diversity ensures that the majority of the work coming from this publication is for those with deep interest and equitable values for people of color. Purchases under the grant were focused on the visual gear and digital storage for the publication’s high-capacity files. The first set of purchases were based on documentaries for entry level audio microphones for interviews and an affordable art lens for documentaries. The second set of purchases were for digital storage as the many video files that were generated to an overwhelming amount of storage.

Submitted by Chris Esmele.

ArtsImpact Student Grants (2023)

Name of Grant Project: House of Culture
Colleges/units involved: Department of Art, ARHU

House of Culture is a new recognized club organization at UMD that focuses on expanding the art community at UMD by allowing student artists of any major share their artworks around campus by submitting them through our official website. The submitted artwork mediums include but are not limited to: digital art, paintings, poetry, graphic design, architectural drawings, fashion design, inventions and original music. With the funds provided by Arts for All, House of Culture was able to print artworks, buy poster boards, promote events through flyers, buy club t-shirts and much more.

Submitted by Nicolas Aguilar.

ArtsAMP Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Research Grant (2023)

Name of Grant Project: Fireplace
Colleges/units involved: Department of Art, ARHU

This project explored memory, place and human connection through the symbol of the fireplace. Fireplaces provide warmth, cultivate a place to gather and function as a heartbeat of my home. Installation included scaled up versions of model fireplaces to create an immersive, human scale installation. The acrylic models of fireplaces were based upon the artist’s mother’s house in Rhode Island and two were from their grandmother’s house in Ireland. LED lights were used to project the silhouettes of the fireplaces to life scale on the walls of the room and additional lights were programmed with Arduinos to follow the pace of the artist’s own breaths, when breathing deeply. The fireplaces in turn come alive with each breath, lit by the life that uses them. This research, funded through the Arts for All Grant, will culminate in the student artist’s Second Year show at the Stamp Gallery this spring 2024, where the work will be publicly on view. The work created through this grant has also been on display at Studio Gallery and the Katzen Art Museum in Washington DC.

Submitted by Jill McCarthy Stauffer.

Other 2023 Student Winners Include:

“Jambush 2.0”: Pop-Up Performances in Unlikely Spaces 
Gerson Lanza, School of Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies

“Physical Sound through Bone Induction”
Dan Leitzman, Department of Art

“Choreographing Science”
Rebecca Steinberg, School of Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies

“ScreenDance and Queerness” 
Mary Kate Ford, School of Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies

“Recycling for Privacy”
Nishant Sachdeva, Robert H. Smith School of Business

“User-Centered Design”
Sama Elsayed-Ali, I-School

“Resonant Bodies”
Britney Falcon, School of Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies

“Afterlife, LLC”
Elyas Masrour, Computer Engineering

“Art and Cancer”
Vainavi Gambhir, Biological Sciences

“Flower STEM Infinity Room”
Ijeoma Christine Asonye, Mechanical Engineering

“Musical Love Letter”
Courtney Simmons, School of Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies

“Saturday Series for Elementary General Music Teachers
Amy Sierzega, School of Music

“Directory Zine”
Caleb Yoshida, Computer Science