Graduate Student Directory

I have a passion for crafting visually captivating digital experiences, placing a strong emphasis on emotional design. My expertise lies in developing games and applications that encourage physical activity, nurture creativity, and engage cognitive faculties to enhance overall well-being. I possess a keen appreciation for aesthetics and am constantly on the lookout for experiences that leave a lasting impression.

My research interests include the current and potential uses of biotechnology in medical, environmental, and artistic contexts. I specifically want to encourage conversations about these applications of biotechnology, and an overall greater understanding of them, to the general public via science journalism and documentary filmmaking.

Keywords: documentary film, bio-art, biotechnology, posthumanism

Jamie Hager is a visual storyteller, and their gender-non-conforming identity is at the heart of their work. They create films that humanize the queer and trans experience and critique patriarchal social norms through humor and absurdity.

Sean experiments with artificial intelligence and its implications and implementations in the art world. From use in creating images, narratives, to games, Sean is researching and speculating the effect artificial intelligence can and will have on creativity.

Keywords: Pre-cinema, Post-cinema, Spectatorship, Media Archeology, Media Infrastructure

Daphne focuses on societal issues related to the treatment of those with differences in emphasizing human apathy and ignorance. Her work spans various disciplines, combining social and material sciences, spirituality, philosophy, industrial and architectural design, and Marxist-Leninist class analysis to create sculptural, wearable, media, or architectural objects which service and facilitate social awareness and the building of dual power, aligning with Leninist principles for working-class-run alternatives. As a design researcher, protest artist, and community-oriented scholar who is Mexican-American, Pagan, lesbian, neurodivergent, and trans, she is jointly committed to using protest art and community-oriented design to combat prejudice and violence against the LGBTQIA2S+ and Latinx communities.

Keywords: Marxism, design research, architectural ceramics, interactive arts, dual power

Olurotimi Akanbi is an artist-scholar who works in the intersection of cinema, history and ethics. His work explores the duality of urban landscapes and the natural world along with the violence, injustice, ruin and renewal born out of that duality. 

Keywords: Cinema, Ethics, Urban History

András Blazsek is a mixed-media artist who works in sound, sculpture, and installation. He recently joined the Department of Media Study at UB to work on a practice-based PhD and is developing research in sonification. He received his MFA from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in Budapest and did postgraduate studies at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne in Germany. He has participated in exhibitions internationally and was hosted in artist-in-residence programs at Futura (Prague), Residency Unlimited (New York), and the Akademie Schloss Solitude (Stuttgart).

Gabriela Córdoba Vivas (she/her) is an artist-scholar who works in the intersection between art, media, and social justice. Her research has revolved around epistemological justice, art and activism, feminisms, urban struggles, and cultural representations. She is a Ph.D. candidate in Media Study at University at Buffalo (SUNY), funded by Fulbright. She is the co-founder of CaldodeCultivo, an art collective that produces socially engaged projects to amplify the struggles of communities in resistance.

I develop video games and interactive projects to explore constructions of phantastical selves in virtual narratives – selves emboldened by haunted animacy. I entangle virtual and corporeal embodiments to advocate for new constructions of an indeterminate "Phantom Self," which emerges from experiences in virtual narratives. Through play in virtual narratives, we get to haunt the constructions of our future while always being haunted by the avatars of our pasts - what wonderfully phantasmic existence we are!

Keywords: Video Games,  Phantasy, Virtual Avatars, Magic, Hauntings

Xiaoxu Dong is a media art artist and a graphic interaction designer. Her research and art practice lies between Art, Machine learning, Design, and Data Visualization. She works across the disciplines of art with a research-driven approach. 

Tim Georger is an artist and media theorist. His current art and research applies video game design theory to experimental electronic music.

Keywords: Game design, Sound Design, Generative Music, Critical Theory, Marxism

Christopher Michael is a research-based multimedia artist and writer. He is primarily interested in exploring spirituality and folklore as they relate to digital cultures and virtual worlds. He is particularly interested in American New Agespirituality and its unique relationship to virtual technologies.

Tian Jiang earned an MFA in Visual Communication Design from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015. Her interest in new media and technology has led Jiang to work in a cross-disciplinary manner utilizing aspects of graphic design, video installations, and performance art to delve into topics of urban modernization, censorship, social networks, and the effects of changing environments on the human experience. Jiang has exhibited her work nationally and internationally including London Art Festival 2018 (Golden Award, Freedom Ambassador 2018); CICA New Media Art Conference 2018 & Solo Exhibition; Currents 2016 Santa Fe International New Media Festival and Fantastic Art China 2016.

Keywords : Data, Social networks, Censorship, AR/VR, Video installation

Holden Treadway is a researcher and PhD student whose primary interests include challenging structures of representational and image-based language. He works with 16mm film, data visualization, dirt, and coal. 

Vav Vavrek is a creator of things and a maker of sounds. Ze enjoys hardware and software synthesis of audio and video, making field recordings, and creating crazy sounds. Most of the time, Vav works on multimedia art projects, experimental films, sculptures, and interactive installations.  Vav builds weird instruments and creates software; as well as experiments with analog synthesis using old test equipment and other electronic waste.

Keywords: Emotional Experiences in Art, Crip Technoscience, Electronic Waste, Affect, Mental Illness Representation   

With a background in film production and gender studies, Ruonan Zhang's work mostly focus on Feminism Media Study and female images in films. Her current research would like to explore the relationship between female and media or machines, and how female images being applied in various kinds of media.

Keywords: Feminism Media Study; Female Images; Hong Kong Cinema