8th Annual Digital Salon

April 7, 2017

The 8th annual Digital Salon is on display in Room 1250, Open Book, at College Library from April 9-16. The exhibition brings together students, both undergraduate and graduate, to showcase artistic and research-based projects that take digital form or rely heavily on IT in the production process.

Rosemary Bodolay, Associate Director of DesignLab, notes, “This year’s Digital Salon showcases projects using a wide-range of technology from straight-forward digital media tools, such digital video cameras and editing software, to the manipulation of a photograph by converting it into a sound file, then creating a new image. DesignLab is excited to help share this creative and innovative work of UW-Madison’s undergraduate and graduate students.”

A number of projects in this year’s exhibition explore either distant locales and that which is close to home. For example, while studying abroad in Monteverde, Costa Rica, during the 2016 spring semester, Natalia Lucero had the opportunity to conduct an independent research study on the diversity of neotropical montane jumping spiders. As she notes, “I was conducting field work at my host family’s farm and began taking videos of the spiders for identification purposes. However, I soon realized I was capturing great footage which showed the distinctive behaviors of these curious creatures; I began documenting with the purpose of creating this compilation video.” The judges also found Natalia’s video fascinating and awarded her submission one of two Honorable Mentions this year.

Meanwhile, Kate Alfin, Lamin Keita, Lauren Maly and Leslie Sabakinu created an online dossier for their History 861 class entitled, East African Working Women: A Comparative Study of Four Postcolonial Cities, Independence to 2000 which compares four cities in the African Great Lakes region to see how urban women participated in the formal and informal economies. Fellow exhibitor Krystal Du captured images of local people during her travels for a portfolio she calls, Humans of Cuba, while Manaporn Phaosricharoen decided to “create a utopia world where everyone would live together peacefully” in World with No Barrier, a collage of historic landmarks that includes the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal, and London’s Big Ben.

World with No Barrier from the Digital Salon

Projects focused on people and places in Wisconsin include Rui Shen and Jessica Rieselbach’s podcast on Food Trucks in Madison, a website created by the online team for CURB Magazine’s issue Wisconsin: A Love Story, and a documentary called Changing the Narrative by Melissa Behling which explores the academic achievement gap in Madison. The film focuses on Shaikobie McGee, a high school student in Madison who struggled academically as a freshman.  Now graduating from Madison Memorial High School, Shaikobie, with the help of an influential teacher and encouragement from the Black Student Union, was able to change her narrative.

The Best-in-Show for the 8th annual Digital Salon was awarded to Wanyi Chen for the digital image, Born from the Chaos, while a second Honorable Mention was given to the podcast We Chase Creatures of the Sky by Sandra Kinzer.

To see these projects and more, please stop by College Library, Room 1250, or visit the online exhibition.

The Digital Salon is organized by DesignLab and the UW-Madison Libraries.