Our studio/lab supports the research of director micha cárdenas, as well as the research of the research associates involved in the studio. Here are some of our current projects:
The Probability Engine
Oceanic
Oceanic, Portal, 2023, micha cárdenas, Cynthia Ling Lee, Gerald Casel, Susana Ruiz, Huy Truong, Ian Costello, Anna Friz
Oceanic: Queering the Ocean, screened at the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival November 11, 2022.
Screened at the TIFF in Toronto June 5 and 25, 2022
Oceanic considers how in this moment of COVID and climate change can we mourn the loss of people, places and capacities, and build new queer abolitionist futures. Oceanic is a multidisciplinary art project that includes poetry, dance, installation and Augmented Reality (AR) to engage with landscapes and aquatic species threatened by climate change, stitching the line from colonization to neoliberalism to racial capitalism through holographic dance performances captured with volumetric video.
Oceanic presents audiences with the coast of the Pacific Ocean at Natural Bridges State Beach, with a series of performances that consider how climate change is a racial justice issue. The creation of this project includes volumetric video of dance performances by Cynthia Ling Lee, Gerald Casel and micha cárdenas, in collaboration with Susana Ruiz, Huy Truong, Anna Friz and Ian Costello.
Oceanic presents volumetric, or 3-D, video of movement performances, alongside 3-D LIDAR scans of ecotonal coastal environments which are disappearing due to sea level rise. These scans include other species who live on the coast, including starfish and sea urchins. Oceanic will also present words from chicana feminist Gloria Anzaldúa, who wrote about this beach to think through solidarity across identities in women of color feminism, such as the former exclusion of trans women, which she tried to undo.
Sin Sol / No Sun
Sin Sol is a multidisciplinary art project including poetry, dance, installation and an augmented reality (AR) app. The app portrays a trans Latinx AI character to consider the intersections of personal trauma with environmental trauma, how the feeling of being unable to breathe intertwines with the effects of climate induced wildfires.
By micha cárdenas, in collaboration with Marcelo Viana Neto, Kara Stone, Abraham Avnisan, Morgan Thomas, Dorothy Santos, Wynne Greenwood, Adrian Phillips.
Sin Sol / No Sun allows users to experience the feelings of a climate change event, in order to deeply consider how climate change disproportionately effects immigrants, trans people and disabled people. Players can find, see and hear a story told through poetry about living through climate change induced wildfires, from a trans latinx AI hologram, Aura. Set fifty years in the future, Aura tells the story of environmental collapse from the past, which is our present in 2018. Part environmental archiving project, the environments in the game include actual 3-D scans of present day forests from the Pacific Northwest. With the goal of multispecies survival and solidarity in mind, Aura’s dog, Roja, leads players on a journey to escape the wildfires and find oxygen capsules which contain poetry, telling more of the story as they progress through the game.
Game design, Writing and Direction by micha cárdenas
Environments, Writing and Installation Design by Abraham Avnisan
3-D modeling by Marcelo Viana Neto, Adrian Phillips and Kara Stone
Produced by Dorothy Santos
Soundtrack by Wynne Greenwood
Character Design by Morgan Thomas
Prototyping by Rachel Raymond and Robin Cruz
Sin Sol AR app
Installation at the Leslie Lohman Museum
Installation at the Leslie Lohman Museum
Performance at the Leslie Lohman Museum
Installation at the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle
Exhibitions
Sin Sol has been exhibited and performed at the Stamp Gallery (2022), Tarble Arts Center (2021), Thessaloniki Biennale in Greece (2019), the Leslie Lohman Museum in New York (2019), the Refiguring the Future exhibition in New York (2018) and the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle (2018).
Lost Chinatowns Everywhere: Performative Documentary Using Play, Augmented Reality, and Dance, Prof. Susana Ruiz
“Here, on the banks of this river that was the lifeblood of Santa Cruz’s last Chinatown, it is hard to imagine those lost bodies, those child bodies… fishing steelhead trout, catching little frogs and river creatures: the way play looks before capitalism takes over.” ~ Lost Chinatowns: A Solo Show by Cynthia Ling Lee
This video documents a current in-progress collaboration between artists Cynthia Ling Lee and Take Action Games (TAG). LOST CHINATOWNS EVERYWHERE is a mobile game about the historical erasure, lost vibrancy, and violent destruction of Santa Cruz’s Chinatowns from 1860-1955. It adapts and expands an existing performance by dancer and choreographer Cynthia Ling Lee. The game combines dance-theatre, documentary, augmented reality, and volumetric video with casual player mechanics based on gesture and movement.
Together, Lee and TAG look at the racist histories of ‘progressive’ Santa Cruz through a multidisciplinary lens that positions dance, play, and documentary as three distinct yet interconnected domains. Using this multidisciplinary lens, we imagine the social and aesthetic potential of merging physical public and private space with mobile media and play.
This project is also a declaration that Asian Americans are deeply connected with the rest of the POC community in the common struggle against racial hierarchies and white supremacy.
This prototype is based on the LOST CHINATOWNS solo and ensemble live performances by Cynthia Ling Lee and developed by Take Action Games with Chris Kerich, Adrian Phillips, and Joshua Tuthill.
Privacy Policy
The Oceanic, Portal iOS app does not collect or store any user data. We do not collect or save any of your personal data through the Oceanic, Portal iOS app. You will be asked to allow location data, but that is only used by the app for walking navigation. You will be asked for camera access, only to display the virtual objects in your screen in your local environment. No data is sent back to our servers. No data is saved locally on your device or on our servers.
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The Sin Sol iOS app does not collect or store any user data. We do not collect or save any of your personal data through the Sin Sol iOS app. You will be asked to allow location data, but that is only used by the app for walking navigation. You will be asked for camera access, only to display the virtual objects in your screen in your local environment. No data is sent back to our servers. No data is saved locally on your device or on our servers.