Please join us on April 9th from 1:00-4:00pm in the Student Commons (4th floor) of the Claude T. Bissell Building on University of Toronto (St. George) campus for this exciting student exhibition.

𝘿𝙊 𝙏𝙃𝙀𝙔 𝙆𝙉𝙊𝙒 𝙏𝙃𝙄𝙎 𝙄𝙎 𝙃𝘼𝙋𝙋𝙀𝙉𝙄𝙉𝙂? 𝙋𝙖𝙩𝙘𝙝𝙬𝙤𝙧𝙠𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙋𝙧𝙖𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙚 𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝘾𝙪𝙡𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙚 & 𝙏𝙚𝙘𝙝𝙣𝙤𝙡𝙤𝙜𝙮 𝙎𝙩𝙪𝙙𝙞𝙤 is an exhibition of capstone studio-based projects from Master of Information students in the Culture and Technology concentration. As the culmination of a year-long investigation into aesthetic inquiry, critical making, and material practice, this exhibition explores creative orientations to knowledge production at the intersections of visual art, technoscience, craftwork, and digital culture. These interdisciplinary multimedia projects—including installations, textile arts, zines, experimental films, computational works, participatory experiences, and more—engage the transformative power of creative-scholarly practice in and beyond the university.

This exhibition challenges us to broaden our conceptual-material horizons to investigate the generative space between artistic and technological mediums, the possibilities between binaries of digital and analogue, and the potential for play in academic space. We invoke the patchwork, where disparate elements come together through craft, as a guiding metaphor for this showcase.

Sitting side by side, these works bring together a variety of mediums, technologies, and materials to form a unique mosaic of scholarly inquiry and creative expression. These works challenge our preconceived notions of the materials themselves, as well as the philosophies and ideologies that inform them; they ask us to feel, to touch, to listen. We invite you to join us in the seams.

Light Leak is a collection of two light-responsive tools for playful making. Participants can modify the size and color of a digital pen or the opacity of a light recording tool by creating brighter or darker light conditions around a photoresistor (light sensor). The photoresistor is connected to an Arduino microcontroller and a computer, where the resulting images are displayed. Both applications were programmed using Arduino IDE and Processing. This project was inspired by the process of making cyanotypes, where the surrounding environment intervenes in, and shapes, the work. Light Leak creates a channel where a piece of the physical environment can “leak” into the digital canvas.

Rejecting the notion of romance as lowbrow culture, You’re Reading What? An Exploration of Fanfiction, Romance, and Womanhood is a zine that investigates meaning-making through engagement with fantasy and pleasure. Drawing from personal experiences of reading fanfiction and romance novels from early adolescence to adulthood, Catton explores how fanfiction reclaims taboo to become a site of safe sexual exploration. Cutting up and recontextualizing imagery from magazines and the internet, You’re Reading What? offers a playful space of open and honest reflection.

(Net/Needle)work deconstructs traditional embroidery sampler making practice. Previously, Chandler digitally mapped networks of embroiderers through their use of shared motifs. Here, she physically reimagines those communities, centring and citing historical sampler makers by reproducing their signatures through digital and analogue embroidery. Chandler sees this work as her own sampler; using affectual response as a guide to iterate on the work of previous embroiderers, she inserts herself within this lineage of discursive practice. Her work interrogates questions of scale and method and argues that we must be attentive to what possibilities can arise when we stitch together affect and abstraction.

Ultramarine Astartes: Warhammer 40K-Themed Mechanical Keyboard Case Design Project explores the relationship between culture and technology through the design of a custom mechanical keyboard case inspired by the Ultramarines of Warhammer 40K. Using 3D modeling, CNC production planning, and surface-finishing research, the work translates fictional symbols, armor structures, and color systems into an everyday functional object. The project treats the keyboard as a cultural artifact rather than a neutral device, examining how fan culture, industrial design, and technological history intersect. From concept development to prototype planning, the process focuses on transforming symbolic visual language into a manufacturable and meaningful design.

Inscrutability is an exploration of the artistic challenge of personal expression as both exposing and concealing simultaneously. From reflecting on the work of artists who explore this paradox, notably Rothko, Feldman, and Kundera, the enigmatic protagonist, Mariana, emerged. The piece is presented from three distinct perspectives: Mariana’s external reality, her journal entries, and the author’s own annotations. It should be read however one sees fit. Inscrutability is the story of an actor reckoning with the allure of singularity and concealment, in life and on stage. It is a rumination on the longing to exist free from the burden of an imposed need to be understood.

Tapes, Samples, and Machines traces the auditory, material, and informational dimensions of sample-based music production. The three CD-boxset features lino-prints referencing imagery from the sonic work’s material sources, while each of its booklets include a timeline of its samples and a list of related readings. Rooted in the artist’s decade-long musical practice and scholarly research, the three-part sonic work weaves together musical compositions and interview clips from notable producers to examine the underrecognized musical format of the beat tape, the embodiment and selection of source materials, and the uses and conceptions of sampling technologies.

Community Story is a dual-channel participatory work composed through sequential, distributed authorship. Beginning with a single sentence, the project unfolds across two parallel systems: a physically transmitted narrative built through in-person encounters, and a digitally circulated story passed between participants. Each contribution extends the text while inheriting its constraints, producing divergence, rupture, and continuity. The work engages themes of authorship, trust, and narrative entropy, questioning where a story resides when no single author controls it. Through a structured yet open-ended process, the project foregrounds how medium shapes collaborate, revealing storytelling as a social, evolving system rather than a fixed artifact.

Mosaic as a Living Craft introduces mosaic as a historical medium that has shaped visual culture across places and time periods. The work presents the history and techniques of mosaic through an interactive display that allows visitors to explore the material at their own pace. A PowerPoint presentation with pre-recorded audio guides visitors through key moments in mosaic history, while several mosaic pieces made with a contemporary kit are displayed alongside it. By presenting both finished and unfinished works, the project reveals different stages of the making process and draws attention to the meticulous work involved in mosaic craft.

This short and multi-channel media installation traces foreign nationals’ lived experiences, navigating belonging and in Toronto, amplifying marginalized voices and lived experiences. Through layered A-roll narration, B-roll of streets and interiors, and ambient sound, the work attends to minor gestures, mundane routines, and undertone atmospheres that rarely appear in urban narratives. A zoetrope-inspired exhibition design loops different parts simultaneously, inviting viewers to inhabit an enclosed, reflective space where individual stories consolidate into a shifting, communal story. With this exhibit, Bryant hopes to display how foreign nationals negotiate “home” within the city’s layered social, spatial, and personal histories.

Is this me? is an exploration of the subjective self, and an attempt to capture memory and the passage of time while striving for authenticity through visual and written journaling. This project includes an edited video of captured footage over the span of one semester at university. It captures the mundanity of daily life, as well as the pain and chaos. Along with recorded footage, there is a written journal from the same time frame, aiming to draw a comparison between written and recorded journals. This work arises from the artist’s desire to shift the critical lens away from others and onto herself, in an attempt to find narrative or meaning in life. She invites the audience to take a close look and judge, and maybe even find reflections of themselves.

This project attempts to examine how emotional attachments to game characters are expressed, yet resist clear explanation. The work begins with a detective-style evidence board that assembles fan objects such as badges, postcards, and collected media, connected through red threads to suggest an attempt to trace meaning. However, the thread breaks, leaving an empty frame that refuses to resolve. Conceptually, the work draws on encoding and decoding frameworks while questioning their limits. The process shifted from translating fan expressions into layered materials to curating existing artifacts, ultimately revealing that affection cannot be fully mapped, but remains open, personal, and unresolved.

The Weekly Archive: Collaging a Life Mediated by Technology is a project based on the artist’s weekly media consumption. He created this work to reflect on how the content he sees every day influences how he thinks, remembers, and understands his surroundings. The project focuses on ideas like surveillance, algorithmic influence, personal reflection, etc. His process starts with collecting screenshots, ads, and images throughout the week. He then chooses and arranges these materials into collages using hand-made methods. Through this process, he tries to turn everyday media into something more visible and meaningful, and to better understand his own relationship with digital life.

Unthrown: The Paper Memory gathers receipts, tickets, and other everyday paper traces into an installation that reflects on memory, consumption, and documentation. By bringing these small, easily discarded materials together, the work treats them as informal archives of daily life. Each fragment holds evidence of movement, routine, and passing time, while the installation as a whole invites viewers to consider how ordinary transactions become part of personal and cultural memory. Through repetition, accumulation, and close attention to modest materials, the project asks what is worth keeping, and how overlooked objects can take on new meaning once they are preserved and re-presented.

Sasha Lombardi Hartig is interested in feminist movements and commentary in Canada. Her work engages with this by producing mixed-media work that elicits an emotional reaction. This piece is inspired by visual art that illuminates recurring themes of women’s empowerment over the course of decades. As an artist, she believes in harnessing women’s voices and giving them a platform to be heard. She creates linocuts and then block prints on archival photos. This work acts as socio- political commentary that confronts society’s obsession with having control over women. She engages with creative communities that situate contemporary feminist conversations in historical tradition.

Velvet Flowers in the Digital Age presents a new perspective on traditional craftsmanship within the digital realm through the various stages of velvet flower creation. The project begins with silk threads, metal frames, and semi-finished structures, gradually documenting how these materials are transformed into complete velvet flower accessories through manual processes.

Combining macro photography, process footage, and digital typography, the work magnifies and reorganizes the subtle changes in materials, methods of connection, and the rhythm of production. Through this process, the artist hopes viewers will not only see the finished form of the velvet flowers but also observe how digital technology allows the craft process itself to become an object that can be viewed, understood, and reimagined.

Revealing Silence is a pop-up book installation that explores how personal stories are disclosed through layered visibility. Each volunteer begins by choosing the cover of a song that represents them, using music as a compact way to express memory, emotion, and connection within the limited space of the book. The project unfolds in three layers: a public layer about the song or its story, a hidden UV layer containing more private reflections, and a final layer revealing the volunteer’s name. Developed from an early interest in invisible text and selective disclosure, the work evolved into a tactile structure that invites viewers to engage with identity gradually rather than immediately.

The Apartment presents an abstract representation of space usage amidst a housing crisis. Outside the sparsely inhabited building, tents hang from season to season. Up above the luxurious, modern lobby, units are alternately overflowing with stored items, lived in, or devoid of life. This lifeless representation asks the viewer what story our environments can tell about our society and our relationship to space (particularly maintained indoor space) – who (or what) deserves it, how much, and for what cost?

Brain Stitch is a collection of knit brain scans based on MRIs selected from an open-access data set used to train radiology artificial intelligence. The pieces highlight both the connections and tensions between analog and digital forms of data visualization and data materialization. The improvement of the knitting technique across the series, Brain Stitch 0.1 being the artist’s first attempt of colourwork, mirrors the improvement in accuracy of artificial intelligence systems in radiology as they develop through continued training. The translation from digital scan to knit stitch reflects the ways medical imaging exists as collaboration between human and machine, while also considering how the clinical gaze is distributed or shared between them in medical environments.

This work intervenes in inherited photographic material by sewing the artist’s family’s history into an album, resisting dominant archival logics that privilege digitization, restoration, and preservation as acts of control. Stored carelessly, the images existed already in a state of deterioration—torn, fragmented, and selectively erased—exposing the instability of memory and the limits of the archive as a site of authority. By reconstituting them through stitching, the labour of repair is foregrounded as a visible and material process. Rather than preserving images through disembodiment, this work asks how care, loss, and destruction are entangled within acts of preservation itself.

Queer in Toronto is an installation that mixes digital and physical queer ephemera, consisting of a map of every Queer Social group in Toronto and ethnographic film photographs and sounds that capture the experience of community building. Guided by the historical lesbian-feminist mandate of DIY approaches to media technologies, this project’s analogue film photos were developed utilizing plants, specifically with a homemade raspberry-tea and caffenol developers. These photos bring the map to life along with soundscapes of the artist’s experience with the various clubs, immersing viewers in Toronto’s dynamic Queer scene and connected community.

Fortresse asks the audience: What do you consider protection and what do you consider comfort? Using feminine patterns, textile quiltwork and fashion assembly methods, Alison creates a reproduction of an iconic image of masculine defense, a knight’s helmet. She encourages the audience to recognize textile skills as impressive as metalwork and challenge them to consider that protection can be soft, that comfort can be shielding. Fibre art is dismissed as a hobby, something to be kept for the home when in reality through our clothes, quilts, and bedding, we are most protected and comforted when cradled by textile skills.

As If Seeing Me in Person [见字如面] transforms Andy’s handwriting into a digital Chinese font in order to test a familiar promise: that handwriting can stand in for the person. Inspired by the phrase jian zi ru mian (“seeing the handwriting is like seeing the person”), the project asks what remains of selfhood when handwritten characters are scanned, standardized, installed, and typed back onto the screen. Andy developed the work by writing templates, digitizing and packaging the glyphs, then comparing the resulting font with his original script through images and feedback from others. The project explores deconstruction, recognition, and the unstable boundary between presence and mediation.

Messages surround us everyday, at every moment. It becomes noise when it is overwhelming. Through this overwhelming noise, there are many hidden connections being overlooked—connections that shape the precarious society in which we all live. This work explores these hidden connections through non-linear approaches, using multi-disciplinary research and design. Weihao uses various mediums to construct systems and narratives that attempt to reveal these connections, particularly through inclusive and interactive design,as a way of expressing diverse experiences of life. Based on these ideas, his work focuses on how inclusivity sustains connection, and how design can make these relationships more visible and meaningful.

The Analog Instagram project reimagines social media interaction in a shared physical environment by translating digital behaviors such as likes and comments into analog forms. The project invites residents to interact with printed photos through handwritten replies, creating a participatory installation that evolves over time. Through weekly postings, documentation, and the final collage, the project explores how platform usage habits, emotional expression, and social presence change beyond algorithm-driven systems. By emphasizing slowness, materiality, and shared presence, the project reflects on how communication, interaction, and community are reshaped when digital practices are reintroduced into everyday physical spaces.

Toronto Cocktail Atlas: Notes on Fragmented Senses shifts the cocktail from a consumable object to sensory experience. Rather than presenting a finished drink, the work breaks it down into its component elements – aroma, color, gesture, and process – transforming it into a series of fragments that can be encountered independently. Through iterative making and video documentation, the project traces how subtle variations accumulate over time to shape perception. Moving between fragmentation and reconstruction, the work invites viewers into a multisensory encounter, where meaning emerges gradually through perception, rather than being fixed in a completed form.

Virtual Love in Reality is a short film that explores virtual companionship and real-life emotions. This film explores how people seek comfort and re-understand the meaning of companionship through virtual characters, as digital media and artificial intelligence increasingly enter daily life. This film uses everyday spaces such as rooms, schools, and parks. Incorporates figures, text dialogues, and a half-silent visual style to create a narrative atmosphere between fantasy and reality. The imagination of virtual relationships inspires this film. Through designing scenes, filming, and editing, it ultimately forms a visual story about loneliness, dependence, and emotional connection between people and virtual characters.