a senior thesis
I studied Biochemistry, Art, DXARTS, the Comparative History of Ideas, and American Indigenous Studies at the University of Washington. My education was shaped by movement across disciplines rather than commitment to a single field. That movement taught me to approach knowledge through curiosity, contradiction, and experimentation. This project reflects that approach.
I entered my Senior Thesis course guided by critical AI theory intending to write an academic paper on Artificial intelligence and my interest in cycles of healing.
Instead, I found myself studying creation.
What began as an investigation into extraction, information, and technological power gradually became an examination of attention, identity, labor, care, and artistic practice.
As I moved between disciplines, places, and mediums, I became less interested in artificial intelligence as an isolated technology and more interested in the systems that shape human experience, individually, collectively and the in-between.
Throughout this process, I created 4 songs that document an evolving relationship with technology, education, creativity, and the internet.
The result is “@”, a thesis organized around artistic practice as a method of inquiry. Rather than offering solutions, the project traces an ongoing investigation into what it means to create, connect, and remain present within systems that increasingly mediate contemporary life.
Thank you for your time, attention and care.
I know these are fleeting, vital, and carry so much weight in our perception of life as storytelling creatures.
art
i’ll paint, for you.
a pretty picture, to consume.
haste and greed are your friends.
you wish the high would never end.
This song began when I was presented with the opportunity to produce a creative thesis. I became detached from a physical piece and decided to pursue the project with music instead.
This song is a reflection on contemporary production, where attention is a resource and visibility are treated as value.
It asks what happens when the creation becomes content, and whether artistic practice can exist outside of the logic of consumption in our capitalist state.
This is important to me comparatively to my education at the University of Washington, where I was able to bend the mold of what a student in the 21st century looks like.
pressure
my peace, and patience, are wearing thin.
if God created me, then why am I pulled to sin?
devilish behavior (in a red night gown).
swear I saw the moon almost frown.
its light upon me, in a shame you only feel.
try to be somebody else, and it’s not real.
make your choices oh so soon, oh so soon.
the pressure drives you crazy:
the pressure to be you.
This song examines identity, contradiction, and the burden of self-improvement, to develop in the pace of the modern world.
I became increasingly aware of the pressure to define myself: as an artist, a student, a woman, a researcher, and a participant within technological systems that I both admire and critique.
The song reflects the tension between authenticity and performance, as well as the desire to become oneself while navigating expectations imposed by culture, technology, and personal ambition.
Rather than offering a solution, the song documents the experience of inhabiting that tension.
room with a view
a room with a view, i’ve got a room with a view (x2)
of wonderful you, my next door dream
cause you’re the one and only one my heart really adores
and I’m so glad my windowpane is just opposite yours
it isn’t the moon way up in heaven above
it isn’t the stars I’m dreaming of
i’m only looking forward to the time when i’ll be sharing with you
our heaven for two, a room with a view
This song is an abstraction, a cover of the song “a room with a view” by Tommy Dorsey and Jack Leonard, reinterpreted through autotune, altered harmonies, and a contemporary perspective.
The cover became a metaphor for the project itself. Much of this work involves engaging with inherited systems: academic, technological, artistic, and cultural, while transforming them through personal experience.
During the creation of this project, I moved from Seattle to Spokane and from Spokane to Honolulu. These shifts in place altered my perspective while reinforcing the continuity of many human concerns.
The room changes. The view changes. The people have faith in growth, faith in success, but there’s little hope or passion for their reality.
As the observer, I capture this with a melancholic cover of the 1930s piece as we approach the end of the 2020s.
so long
been so long, since I missed you.
been so long, since kissed you.
brush it off and return a state of mind.
pardon my behavior, I’m unwell.
at least I gotta contradiction riding on my back,
no I don’t want to wait around.
it’s my pleasure to assist you,
but I will not miss you,
guess service jobs work like that.
been so long, since I missed you.
been so long, since kissed you.
brush it off and return a state of mind.
pardon my behavior, I’m unwell.
This song explores the tension between care, labor, detachment, survival, and survivance. It reflects the expectation that care should be performed willingly, endlessly, and without resistance.
It resists the demand to perform wellness, productivity, or emotional resolution. Rather than treating pain as something to be hidden or corrected, the song acknowledges its continued presence.
The piece also engages with the notion of hysteria: the tendency to label refusal, exhaustion, grief, anger, or withdrawal as irrational when they disrupt established systems. The contradiction carried throughout the song is the desire to care alongside the desire to leave.
Rather than resolving these tensions, the song remains with them. In that continued presence, I locate a form of survivance.
In conclusion, there is no conclusion.
This project does not arrive at a resolution.
It moves instead through fragments of attention, labor, memory, and sound, tracing how creation becomes a way of thinking rather than a way of concluding.
In this project, I examined how creation functions not as output, but as a site where meaning is produced through tension rather than resolved through explanation.
This work remains open-ended by design, as the conditions it responds to are themselves ongoing.
As an artist, as a human, I can only offer my perspective, formed through my personal experience, thoughts, and feelings.
Amidst our constant connectivity in a loneliness epidemic from a searing widespread addiction to social media, these are real thoughts that humans are having in the digital era.
There’s a silent renaissance of creation, thought, and power that we are inside of.
For now, because here is always now, @.
