The Armadillo 

October 2022

# Live Performance
# Multimedia Projection
# Poetry

In October 2022, I got a chance to learn from and collaborate with multimedia artists Masha Tsimring and Nicholas Hussong. We spent a week in the LUMA Theatre of the Fisher Center for Performing Arts to experiment with the ephemeral mediums like lighting and video. Putting together old and new technologies to work, our hands spread across House music to Bach to oil in water to sands…

On the last day, I put together multiple new and old media to build a live performance along with other students across different disciplines, such as photography, film, and literature. I was able to apply what I learned from Masha and Nicholas into the show - theater lighting design, sands and overhead projector, LED projector and programmed video processed by QLab… Because everyone came in from vastly different backgrounds and I am the one with the most technical background, I learned to hear others' needs and program the visuals corresponding to a communal desire.

︎Rose Xu (me) on the most left, sharing programming ideas of video design with fellow professors and students.

Prof. Hussong told us, "many of your ideas may grow better when transplanted into another people's mind." Indeed, I absorbed an idea from a literature student and created a live interaction between poem reciting and video projection. Realizing that my math and dance works could potentially inspire students from all disciplines, I am eager to lead more workshops to share my ideas and tools in my adventure of finding the coalescence of science and art as well as building the technical planform to enable that.