The Department of Media Study, SUNY at Buffalo

05/12/2026

05/10/2026

✨ The Department of Media Study is thrilled to announce the selected projects for the 2026 DMS Student Showcase & Awards ✨

After an inspiring week of screenings, installations, discussions, and deliberations, we’re excited to finally share this year’s selected projects and program.

🎬 2026 DMS Student Showcase & Awards
📍 Center for the Arts, University at Buffalo
📅 May 12, 2026

🎮 Games, Installations & Live Performances

🕟 4:30 PM – 6:00 PM
Featuring video games, expanded media works, multi-channel environments, a projection showcase of DMS 302 Experimental Moving Image student hand-painted films, and an experimental live sound performance throughout DMS spaces.

🎥 Film Screenings
🕕 Begin at 6:00 PM | CFA 112

🏆 Followed by:
• Graduate & Undergraduate Academic Awards
• Audience Awards
• Faculty Jury Awards across multiple categories

🎮 Selected Game Projects 🎮

1,000 Ways to Kill a Worm — Kacie Allen & Eliana Freeman
Muse — Eliana Freeman
Ghoulaxy — John Cadden
Charge: Circuit Break — John Cadden
Fragment of the Past — Andrea Kyaw
Balance Due — Andrea Kyaw & Mays Dweiri
Wonderful Place — Alex Zelkas
Jungle World — Owen Maiore
Flappy Bull — Kendall Bullen
Shape — Everett Wong
Hair Cream Chronicles — Tabshir Khandaker

🖼 Expanded Media / Installation / Performance 🖼

Subsidence — Multi-channel installation by Natalie Bucki, Victor Padilla, Benjamin Thieben, Michael Liu, Marat Arutunian, and Mairead Conlon
Dream Reader — Experimental live sound performance by Maxwell Tramantano

🎞 Selected Films 🎞
(Projects listed below are not in screening order.)

Head or Tails — Joseph Deschamps
Roboto — Nastaran Bagheri
Beasts of Silence — Max Tramantano
I Remember — Mariia Ziuzina
Welcome Home — Caitlin Andrejova
One at a Time — Mays Dweiri
Where Is My Reflection — Charlie Wong
Living in the Shadow — Liya Mena
Unraveled — Caitlin Andrejova & Reese Betts
Eggs of Asphalt — Benjamin Thieben
The Angelrithim — Jasmine Julian
Limbo — Victor Padilla
Unknowing Lament — Natalie Bucki
Man in Wonderland — Victor Padilla
I Know, But I Don’t — Marat Arutunian
Here I Come — Mays Dweiri
The Lavender Revolution — Jacob Burgin
A Distant Home — Maggie Graber
Weeping Willow — Burke LeFauve
Stenciled — Lauren Diegert
Wonderful World — Mike Liu
Promised Future — Sean Dust
It’s Totally a Time Machine — Toni Bodami
Dreams — Charlie Wong
Animated Identities -- Samarah Bermudez & Rayya Ross

Congratulations to all selected projects — and heartfelt thanks to every student and media artist who submitted work for consideration. The creativity, vulnerability, experimentation, political engagement, technical ambition, and emotional honesty across this year’s submissions made the selection process incredibly difficult… in the best possible way.

Join us on May 12 for an evening of cinema, art, sound, games, experimentation, collective reflection, and celebration. ✨

05/09/2026

The Department of Media Study, SUNY at Buffalo is proud to present the 2026 DMS STUDENT SHOWCASE! Please join us MAY 12TH STARTING AT 4:30PM at the Center for the Arts, University at Buffalo for an evening of films, VR, games, installation, performance, interactivity, and all the things we do in Media Study!

Image still frame from Caitlin Andrejova's film "Welcome Home"

05/01/2026

Please join us tomorrow, May 2nd, at 6pm for Dana Hunt-Locklear's MFA thesis exhibition and game 'starcrossed.'! It will be on display at the Niagara Frontier Food Terminal (1500 Clinton Street, Unit 15b, Buffalo NY). Please join us for a night of celebration, play, and exploration in rural southeastern Indigenous identity!

04/27/2026

PLASMA welcomes Tomás Henriques, composer and digital instrument designer.
Dr. Henriques' research encompasses the fields of music theory, digital music instrument creation, spatial audio design, game-interfaces, and computer-aided vision. This research has been featured in numerous peer-reviewed publications and is internationally recognized by his first-place win at the 2010 Guthman Musical Instrument Competition, with the invention of the “Double Slide Controller,” an electronic instrument inspired by the slide trombone and the multi-patented "Sonik Spring" technology, featuring a hand-held interface that translates force and 3D hand-wrist motion information into sound and visual data.

Monday, April 27, 2026 | 6:00 – 8:30 PM
Center for the Arts, Lecture Hall 112
PLASMA talks are free and open to the public.

04/17/2026

PLASMA welcomes David Mawer, media artist and developer. Dave Mawer is an artist, arts educator, and researcher currently residing in Buffalo, New York. He is interested in understanding how the arts classroom might be used as a context for building students’ programming identities. Mawer is a former Media Study student and holds a PhD in education from the University at Buffalo, focusing on computational media in arts education.

Monday, April 20, 2026
6:00 – 8:30 PM
Center for the Arts, Lecture Hall 112
PLASMA talks are free and open to the public.

04/16/2026

Please join us next Thursday, April 23rd, at 6:30 pm for an evening of experimental music and video in Slee Hall, room B1. Signal Diagnostics is James Pardue's MFA thesis performance. This live event features three performers improvising with purpose-built instruments assembled from found media objects: a camera, a television, and a computer. The imperceptible signals that live inside these objects are amplified into audible sounds, shaped by a collaborative interplay among performers.

Over the course of the evening, immersive audiovisual interludes will play between these movements. These video works, generated in real-time and spatialized across 23 speakers, explore themes related to media histories and materialities. Together, Signal Diagnostics aims to foster an embodied perspective on the media technologies we use and the temporalities they construct.

04/12/2026

Please join us in sharing the history of Seneca Nation's Oil Spring Territory and the presence of oil in Seneca history before settler discovery in the United States, featuring talks from Randy John (Seneca, Turtle Clan) and Alicia Puglionesi (Johns Hopkins University). This event will take place in the CFA Atrium on April 22nd at 1PM; it is free and open to the public- light refreshments will be served!

04/10/2026

PLASMA welcomes media artist Stephanie Rothenberg.
Stephanie Rothenberg works in both traditional media and digital formats to make visible the inequitable systems and infrastructures of techno utopias. Moving between real and virtual spaces, her artworks focus on themes concerning emerging economies and their underlying sociopolitical impact. Recently she has been researching the politics of conservation initiatives and sustainability myths around new blue economies such as aquaculture. She is also currently developing a collaborative artwork on the impact of anthropogenic sound as an environmental detriment on marine life. Her artworks engage a variety of platforms that include interactive installation, drawing, sculpture, video, sound and performance. To view more of her work, visit https://stephanierothenberg.com

Monday, April 13, 2026
6:00 – 8:30 PM
Center for the Arts, Lecture Hall 112
PLASMA talks are free and open to the public.