VCUarts Kinetic Imaging

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VCUarts Kinetic Imaging

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The Department of Kinetic Imaging offers BFA and MFA degrees to students pursuing video, animation,

The Department of Kinetic Imaging offers BFA and MFA degrees to students pursuing video, animation, sound, emerging media and the many hybrids and extensions of those areas.All students in the BFA program get a solid foundation in video, sound, and animation production. The curriculum allows flexibility, enabling students to a focus on an area or to create a cross-disciplinary art practice. Student outcomes include: making art and media work that is meaningful, making meaningful analysis and evaluation, attaining high level of electronic and digital media technical skills, and professional preparation.

10/12/2026

Kinetic Imaging Adjunct Professor, Julie Grosche, and her students are currently working on a musical that shares the magic of friendship!

Students were prompted to collaborate in small groups to create a short musical about friendship with singing, dancing, and acting. Each group were given roles to split among themselves while collaborating; Directors, Music & Dance Leads, Film Crews, and Editors!

⭐️ Directors were tasked with rewriting the script for the assigned scene, overseeing performance, pacing, and shot planning.

⭐️ Music & Dance Leads will work closely with the director to develop choreography, rhythm, and emotional tone.

⭐️ Film Crews will handle camera and sound, and coordinate with performers and ensure clean recordings.

⭐️ Editors will lead post-production for the scene, working closely with all members to craft the final edit.

All students will act, sing, and dance in the film! Amazing work students!! 👏👏
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VCUarts Julie Grosche Institute for Contemporary Art

10/07/2026

Applications Open! MFA in Kinetic Imaging at VCUarts

Through the making of artwork that examines the artist’s relationship to culture and society, the MFA in Kinetic Imaging broadens the possibilities of video art, animated arts, sound art, emerging media, installation, interactivity coding, and mediated performance.

🗓️ Application Deadline: January 15th, 2027
🔗 For more information about the MFA program, click the link in our bio!
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“Site for Ethereal Being” HWIY (M.F.A. ‘26) 휘 HWIY
A collection of watercolor painting, short stories, and film that creates space for those in the midst of transformation with a touch of surrealism. At its center, a television plays an abstract watercolor animation, pigment bleeding, pooling, and shifting to mirror the unseen movements of the inner mind. The installation is surrounded by garments modeled after the protective baenaet-jeogori, the Korean newborn’s first robe.

Presented at the Institute for Contemporary as past of the 2026 MFA Thesis Exhibition
Explore more work by HWIY at www.hwiy.art
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VCUarts VCUarts Alumni

09/30/2026

Immerse yourself in “En Masse” by artist/composer and VCUarts Kinetic Imaging adjunct faculty Sara Bouchard developed in collaboration with ecologist Dr. Chris Gough.

En Masse is a new composition for choir and drums which gives voice to the carbon cycle while and promotes a culture of care amidst the climate crisis.

🗓 Thursday, October 8th
⏰️ 7:00 pm
📍 Institute for Contemporary Art

The event includes a pre-performance conversation on art-science collaboration with Sara and Chris, moderated by Kinetic Imaging Department Chair Hope Ginsburg.

The University of Richmond Perkinson Hall will also be hosting another performance of “En Masse” on Wednesday, October 21st at 7:30 pm.

Sara Bouchard (M.F.A ‘19) is an artist and composer who uses sound, installation and performance to interweave song and the landscape. The performance features Scott Clark on drums and the 12-person vocal ensemble The En Masse Singers, conducted by Kristen Melzer. En Masse bridges scientific concepts with themes of ritual and imagination and embraces the experimental, incorporating field recordings, crowd-sourced text and scientific data into the score.

Learn more and reserve free tickets in our link in bio!
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VCUarts VCUarts Alumni VCU Rice Rivers Center Sara Bouchard Institute for Contemporary Art

09/22/2026

Tune into Kinetic Imaging Professor Stephen Vitiello’s insights on the magic of discovering, shaping and sharing soundscapes in art installations, LPs, film, firmament and even through the architecture of the World Trade Center in the VCUarts “Uncharted” Podcast hosted by Aaron Anderson!

Stephen Vitiello is known internationally as an electronic musician and media artist. Vitiello’s multi-channel sound works and videos are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Lyon.

Also spotlighted is musician, composer, and sound artist, Steve Ashby, whose work focuses on sound found in the natural and digital world to discover places of intersection which engage in the art of listening.

🎧 “Uncharted” is a podcast that hosts conversations with a faculty member and a guest that illuminate the choices we make as artists, designers and educators, and the transformative impact of the arts on individuals and communities.

Click the link in our bio to listen to the full episode!
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VCUarts Stephen Vitiello Steve Ashby

09/14/2026

Immerse yourself in “Breathe, River” 🎷
A sound Installation by KI Adjunct Faculty Sara Bouchard, featuring a melodic composition based on water quality data from the James River and recorded on tenor saxophone by Jason Scott.

🗓️ Sunday, September 20th
⏰ 1:00 - 5:00 pm
📍 Byrd Park Pump House (1708 Pump House Dr)

Sara Bouchard (M.F.A. ‘19) is a multidisciplinary artist and composer who uses sound, installation and performance to interweave song and the landscape. Her work, “Breathe, River,” is informed by conversations with aquatic ecologist Dr. Paul Bukaveckas (VCU School of Life Sciences and Sustainability) and reveals the drastic fluctuations of dissolved oxygen levels in the river due to harmful algal blooms.

This project was originally presented in 2019 and was supported by a 2018 grant from Richmond CultureWorks (Richmond CultureWorks). Water quality data is presented courtesy VCU Rice Rivers Center (VCU Rice Rivers Center).
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Exhibition videography: Jared Duesterhaus and Matt Flowers
Exhibition sound recording: Stephen Vitiello
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VCUarts VCUarts Alumni Sara Bouchard Friends of Pump House

09/10/2026

Congratulations to our Kinetic Imaging Alumni, ShanMu Sun M.F.A. ‘25 and Ruiqi Zhang M.F.A ‘19, for being selected as finalists for the 2026 Lumen Prize!

💫 The Lumen Prize is given annually to multimedia artists who explore the relationship between art and technology in all its forms, and the competition includes more than 2,200 submissions spanning 82 countries!

Their nominated work, “The Graceful Site”, is a speculative fable told through a minimal theater within a game engine. It tells a story of a failed future of automation and sketches an alternative trajectory for artificial intelligence, where humans are gone yet AI technologies remain.

It unfolds as a live, autonomous program governed by its own internal logic: a performance without end, a system endlessly rehearsing itself.
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VCUarts VCUarts Alumni ShanMu Suen Zhang Ruiqi 张瑞麒

07/20/2026

The Department of Kinetic Imaging is Hiring Federal Work Study Students for the 2026-27 Academic Year!

If you are a Kinetic Imaging major who has been awarded Federal Work Study for the 2026-27 academic year, please consider applying to a position open in our department!

🩷 Technology Assistants (Equipment Checkout)

⏰ The position is part-time and requires availability of 6 - 10 hours per week

The job listing is currently LIVE on Handshake and interviews will be conducted virtually over the summer ☀️✨

✅ Head over to Handshake to learn more about the position and to submit your application! We can’t wait to meet you!
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VCUarts

05/12/2026

Congratulations to Kinetic Imaging students Bella Frank and Max Biscarr, along with Professor Hope Ginsburg, on having their written reflection, ‘Ocean Class’ at VCUarts, invited to be a part of OCEAN / UNI’s Critical Ocean Literacy Educator Toolkit!

🌊 For two years, our two KI students were in collaboration with OCEAN / UNI’s transdisciplinary online program and Professor Ginsburg’s [Could be just “Hope’s]
Ocean Class course, focusing at the intersection of the ocean, art and activism and engaging with a global community of ocean lovers.

The essay is deliberately more experiential than the rest of the curriculum, reflecting the act of learning, experimenting and creating that the class went through as a group, potentially inspiring educators to develop similar experiments.

🪸OCEAN / UNI’s toolkit is part of TBA21–Academy’s many transdisciplinary learning initiatives, carefully selected from among hundreds of talks, the module offers an entry point into critical ocean literacy, bringing together sessions from different semesters into a coherent structure that traces some of the central lines of inquiry developed over those years.
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.iqure

05/11/2026

CONGRATULATIONS! To our Spring 2026 KI Graduates! 🎓✨

A huge round of applause for all your hard work and the best of luck in all your post-grad adventures! 💕 Can’t wait to see and hear about all your upcoming accomplishments!

We are so proud of each of you! Stay in touch! 💌 We miss you already
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05/06/2026

💜 KI GALA 2026 PHOTO DUMP 💜

Our students and faculty had lots of fun celebrating the end of the semester at our annual KI Gala! Swipe through to see our KI students performing in the talent show! 🤩

Congratulations to our students who were recognized with Awards from our Behold the Magnificent Screening, KI Mixtape Exhibition, and Senior Capstones! We also presented the Pushing Boundaries of Media Award, International Cultural Impact Award, Carter G. Woodson Award for Academic Excellence, and KI Community Spirit Award!

⭐ A special shout out to Lilith Watts from receiving the 2026 Dean’s Scholarship!

Pam Turner also received the Greatest Animation Teacher of All Time Award and was inducted into the KI Furby Hall of Fame! Thank you for everything you have contributed to our department over the many years you have been a part of it! We will miss you!

And finally, thank you Stephen Vitiello, for your incredible work as department chair the past eight years! Your leadership and guidance has been incredibly valuable to all the students, faculty, and staff. We cannot thank you enough for your service and passion for the department!

Congratulations everyone for another amazing year! 👏🥳
We cannot wait to welcome you back this Fall!
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Address

801 W Marshall Street
Richmond, VA
23284

Website

http://arts.vcu.edu/kineticimaging/

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