VCA DESIGN & PRODUCTION
GRADUATE SHOWCASE
GRADUATE SHOWCASE
R McNaught
A website like this is, more or less, a particular frame on some data. We shouldn’t forget that. Everything you see on here at one point graced a textbox or an upload button. At the same time, we should resist this collapse into a kind of digital materialism—or at least allow the website an attempt to metamorphise into something other than itself. It doesn’t quite get there, of course, but its being stuck in between two types of meaning becomes special in itself. When Ela, Anna, and I were planning how this site would work and how we’d let the students take it over, one way we thought about it was as a garden, a horticultural thing, where the graduates aren’t just formatting media but tending a small plot in a wider field: some informal, some experimental, some cautious and thorough, each in advance of themselves but working with finely honed skills and a sensitivity to their own efflorescing practices.
Rowan is the secretary of Darpa press, and a former student of the VCA fine arts dept.
Such a garden might start simply, with a flower like this, if that’s not putting too fine a point on it.
Lily Macciolli
Growth, 2025
But a garden tends to become complex, branching out unpredictably,
while also exhibiting a kind of careful canopy shyness.
Madeleine Harris
Maxwell’s Demon, 2025
You might plan such a garden carefully over the course of a month or a year.
Ngochan Lam
My Days in September 2024, paper
You might visit one day to find it overrun with rambunctious weeds: castor, capeweed, or tussock, and decide in any case that you like it that way.
tessie gresley
h1_1m_d0lly!, interactive website, 2025
Or you might look up into an unusually clear night sky, become entranced by a kind of cellular play that you notice in the stars, and fall asleep.
Conan Richards
Mimeverse, Interactive Simulation, 2025.
Then, having woken, try to recall the dream you had, which had a certain symmetry to it.
Wenchang Du
梦, Dream Insight, 2025
And a certain miniaturised luminance to it, a faint golden glow.
Ye Chen
Set & Lighting Design "Eurydice", 1:50 Scale Model
What does it all mean? You had better go consult the hermit, without whom no garden is complete.
Feiyang Suo
THE HERMIT-IX
But along the path to the hermitage, as the light of day emerges, you seem to forget the details of the question that was bothering you.
Becky Tang
Anemos, mixed-media animation, 2025
Instead, you let your mind wander, and images come and go.
Vi Nguyen
decomposition, digital animation, 2024