NEXT 2017

Highlighted Students

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• Mimi D’Autremont • NMPJ

  Anyone Like Me
  Anyone Like Me is a multimedia project investigating the intersection of Deaf culture and America’s favorite pastime: football. The Gallaudet University Bison of Washington, D.C., are the world’s only collegiate Deaf and Hard of Hearing football team. Ninety percent of Deaf and Hard of Hearing individuals are raised in families with no prior knowledge of American Sign Language (ASL) or Deaf culture. This project follows coach Shelby Bean, 25, a Hard of Hearing man and former Bison team captain. Shelby and his players say that before they came to Gallaudet they each experienced marginalization for their perceived ‘disability,’ and athletics was often the only place they ever felt normal. When Shelby came to Gallaudet as a freshman he didn’t know anything about Deaf culture or ASL, but through the football team he found his place within the culture and his Hard of Hearing identity. The narratives of Shelby and the football team are told through a combination of a documentary film, photographic portraits & writing from the team, and an interactive website at www.anyonelikeme-project.com.

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• Hannah Chasen • ExDesign

  Finding Refuge
  My project explores ways to design a museum exhibit featuring Syrian artifacts (as a means of preserving them) in a way that facilitates dialogue between Syrian refugees and citizens of the host countries where these refugees have found new homes. By focusing on community-centered design and development the goal is to create an experience that portrays a specific culture, delivering a message of hope to members of that culture and establishing a connection between visitors of the featured culture and visitors of a different cultural background. Refugee visitors to this exhibition will find a recognizable domestic space filled with familiar images, smells and sounds. Couches and spaces with food and drink samples invite visitors of all backgrounds to spend time in the environment and relax. Objects on display, graphic posters and interactive elements in the space will give visitors of all backgrounds an introduction to the history of the country and culture of Syria. Creating a familiar domestic space will give refugees a brief sense of security and stability while creating an environment conducive to meeting and building empathy for another person. Additionally, displaying a selection of objects threatened by the continued civil war in Syria and featuring food and songs familiar to Syria gives a tangible identity to Syrian refugees, who have lately been a source of political debate.

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• Khadijah Wilson • Fine Art
  

  Object of Neglect
  I am interested in the notion that the black body performs a kind of abstraction. By sewing the faces of two hoods together, both subjects become visually indistinguishable from one another; covering up individual differences. As a result, the work presents a kind of paradox: the black body as simultaneously figural, yet it exists in a constant state of resemblance. The hoodie, then, forms the missing link between mistaking them as real bodies or as mere objects. Restricted from acting as subjective entities, Object of Neglect intends to convey feelings of intimacy, abjection, and tension. Throughout my work, I use a particular visual language to depict black corporeality as an object of visual neglect. In the short film, I blur the focus on the camera, where the black body is reduced to an abstracted form. Similar to the video, my photographs enhance the body as an inanimate form by placing my connected subjects onto a sterile white background. My subjects appear to float at the center of the image, emphasizing the hooded black body as a symbol. I intend to call attention to black corporeality as a commodity object in our contemporary visual culture.
  

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• Jack Mead • Graphic Design

  Title TK
  Can virtual reality have an impact on the world of psychology and the treatment of phobias and anxieties in a fun and safe setting? In the future, will immersive and artificially intelligent technologies allow us to improve ourselves through the simple principle of practice-makes-perfect in different VR worlds from the safety of our homes? For this project, I/Jack Mead designed and created a virtual reality exposure therapy game for mental health treatments of social anxiety, particularly focussed on children living with autism spectrum disorder. The project takes you through your first day in a new elementary school where you must confront several situations of varying intensities that normally would cause a new student some anxiety, allowing you to get over your fears and improve your state of life in a safe and controlled environment. Virtual reality’s uncanny and unique ability to make people suspend their beliefs and feel like they are in a different world is truly revolutionary when it comes to mental health and self improvement. In 20 years time, maybe we’ll be able to perfect our behaviors, reduce our fears and anxieties, and improve the speed at which we learn and retain information by learning through experience.