Senior Thesis Exhibition
2021
I created an interactive gallery exhibition for my Senior Thesis Exhibition as a Studio Art Major at Pomona College.
This project included three components: a 2D and 3D animated short film, a Virtual Reality experience, and a corresponding sculpture installation. Scroll to see each component in more detail!
MY STATEMENT
I reduce complex structures, stylistically and intellectually. I do this through 2D and 3D animation. I believe that any idea or experience, no matter the complexity, can be narrated through the lens of a children’s book, so I bring this influence into my work. I acknowledge that I am a complex being, too, so I use my work to break down the complex themes I grapple with. I explore themes of craftsmanship and the value of craft, overproduction and overconsumption, and mental health. I aim for an adult demographic while maintaining a childlike heart, positioning myself in the center of the human condition.
I’m exploring feelings and emotions as physical things and how they interact with spaces of ours. Are they welcome? How do they affect the way we exist in these spaces? What do these emotions feel like, physically? I encourage you to look around and touch all parts of my exhibition, as long as you promise to notice how they feel.
Through this exhibition, I invite you into my space, both into the spaces I’ve created and into the spaces where I create. It’s in these spaces that I wonder where things come from and how they come to be. In an effort to be mindful about the conflict between craftsmanship and mass production, I invite you to create your own narratives about where the things around you come from. It doesn’t matter if the narrative is accurate, it’s just important to wonder.
Alexis Rudy
Short Film
Component 1
In this film, I explore the conflict between mass production and the value of craft. In an attempt to be mindful of this, I try to wonder where the things around me come from. This is the world and narrative I've constructed to describe where one of my day-to-day objects comes from. I encourage you to do the same; it doesn't matter if the narrative is accurate, it's just important to wonder.
I constructed the landscapes in Maya, and animated over them in ToonBoom Harmony.
Virtual Reality Experience
Component 2
In this Virtual Reality Experience, I invited my viewers into my spaces where I create. In this component, I'm exploring the idea of emotions as physical things that creep into our spaces. How do they affect the way we exist in our spaces? What do they feel like, physically? Are they welcome or are they intrusive? Each of the three rooms I built was loaded onto three different sets of VR goggles, to give the viewer the chance to explore three rooms in my home and how they feel to me.
I built and animated these rooms in Maya and viewed them through an Oculus Quest.
Sculpture Installation
Component 3
This hanging sculpture is a supplemental component to Virtual Reality experience I've created. As viewers use the VR goggles, they are encouraged to walk through the hanging sculpture to feel the physical sensation of the objects they're bumping into. This is a more physical manifestation of emotions as physical sensations. The sculpture intentionally doesn't line up exactly with the VR environment, so the viewers will feel surprised and startled as these physical objects start to intrude on their personal space without being able to see them.