Sound Weaving is both a visual artwork and an interactive sonic tapestry where

scanned sounds intertwine, when engaged with collaboratively to form spontaneous

harmonies and ever-evolving sonic patterns. As visual artwork, it represents the sounds we carry within while the fragments of audio when scanned collaboratively with others thread together unpredictably, creating a free-flowing composition that shifts with each interaction. No two moments are the same—each experience is a unique blend of serendipity and structure, where randomness births unexpected beauty. Like strands in a loom, the sounds merge and separate, weaving an ephemeral composition that exists only in the present.

This performance-lecture blends web-based interaction, AI, video, and live engagement to explore memory, emotion, and speculation. Barrios Solano uses AI-powered web apps to weave together storytelling, movement, and digital objects to explore questions of cybernetics, lost ancestors, time travel, queer longing, recursion, and migration through algorithmic playfulness.

This project explores how hip-hop artists from migrant backgrounds use rap as a medium to express identity, resistance, and belonging in European societies. The presentation highlights key artists and lyrics that challenge exclusionary narratives and redefine European cultural spaces.

Global Jazz serves as a space for artist empowerment and transnational collaboration,

particularly within Afro-Diasporic and post-colonial communities. This presentation

connects cultural production with social impact through musical and social empathy,

illustrated here at the intersection of jazz and diasporic traditions.

This thoughtspark talk explores the power of training data and the importance of

intentional data curation for machine learning. BIG Labs and Snake Nation are connected to a robust ecosystem and GLOBAL network of collaborators across multiple initiatives and sectors.

Migratory Drag is an avant-garde performance piece exploring survival, positionality, and resistance. Drawing inspiration from the migratory behavior of the dragonfly species Anax junius, which skillfully avoids flying over open waters to evade predators, the performance invokes this natural phenomenon as a metaphor for navigating barriers to social justice.

This performance explores the intersections of migration, digital storytelling, and third-world feminism through an intimate act of care—cooking. Inspired by my mother’s act of “radical care,” I will imagine her kitchen and prepare “phuchka”, a well-known pan-Indian snack, in 10 minutes. As I share my migration stories alongside my mother’s, weaving in the tale of phuchka, her favorite songs and colors, and reflections on care, I recognize how she has embodied care as a form of “radical care” throughout her life. Integrating AI into performance complicates the exploration of memory, identity, and cultural heritage.

To evoke the complexity of Black lives in the U.S. South, and especially Florida, I will show the multimodal manuscript that The Collaboratory has been crafting. It integrates text, videos, podcasts, audio, and artwork to offer a more interactive experience that highlights joy, entrepreneurship, and success as critical moments of African diaspora collective journeys during times of race-based violence.

This research demonstration and listening exercise examines Harmonic Resurgence, a Hip Hop mixtape that engages archival recovery, diasporic sonic memory, and the aesthetics of marching band traditions. The presentation will explore how the mixtape was reinterpreted into a live halftime performance by the Clemson University Tiger Band, offering critical insights into the intersection of digital music production, large-scale ensemble performance, and Black musical storytelling. By bridging Hip Hop’s technoscientific innovations with historically Black collegiate and mainstream marching band traditions, this project rethinks authorship, sonic agency, and the pedagogical possibilities of interdisciplinary music-making.

This presentation delves into the creative and technical process behind Radical Chic Frug, a large-scale virtual production set to launch in late summer or fall of 2025. The project, a collaboration with Ryan Hope Travis and Darius Brown, revisits the 1970s Manhattan soirée where famed conductor Leonard Bernstein hosted the Black Panthers. Inspired by Tom Wolfe’s iconic article Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny’s (published in New York Magazine in June 1970), the production examines the intersections of privilege, activism, and identity during a pivotal moment in American social history. Through music, dance, and film, Radical Chic Frug uses cutting-edge virtual production techniques to explore the ongoing relevance of the cultural tensions that Wolfe satirized. The project also situates these dialogues within a contemporary framework, reflecting on modern movements for equity, social justice, and the role of privilege in cultural spaces.

A framework for developing belonging with stories, rituals and fantastic realism.

Expressing an authentically conscious exploration of our migratory journeys mapped using indigenous sound and ancestral movement. An improvisational participatory ritual that incorporates Afro-indigenous spirituality using various attunement instruments, spoken word, praise, dance and imagery. A playful invitation to fellow affiliate faculty family to participate and become part of a sacred container sanctified by our collective destinations, revelations, and transformative voices.

12:45pm - Student Research and Pitch Presentations in the Innovation Room

1:35pm - Student Project Exhibits and Networking in the Exploration Room

2:20pm - Faculty/Student Panel on Design and the Creative Process in the Innovation Room

This event is for CAME Affiliate Faculty only. Please navigate to the Affiliate Only Padlet for more information.

Join us for a night of fun and festivities in downtown Gainesville at The Bull: 18 SW 1st Ave, Gainesville, FL 32601.

Come to the Big Culture & Arts Festival in Downtown Gainesville for live performances, workshops, and arts/tech demonstrations. the event is hosted by The How Bazar and Dion Die Records.

On the MAIN STAGE:

3:00pm - Remixing Joy: Hip Hop, Hope, and the Digital Imagination - A Conversation with Melvin Villaver and Kevin Winstead

4:55pm - Power of Circle: African Music and Dance Sharing with Rujeko Dumbutshena and Kenneth Metzker

5:40pm - Power of Circle- African Music and Dance Sharing with Rujeko Dumbutshena and Kenneth Metzker