Creative work
Past work
Privacy is the most misunderstood pillar of modern democracy. To many, privacy is a comfort. When asked about the digital encroachment on privacy the response is often "I have nothing to hide." Yet, both perceptions erode the fundamental role privacy plays in upholding liberal society.
In this video we explore the danger Silicon Valley poses to the preservation of democratic society. Examining their hypocrisy, we discuss how the freedom they tout is threatened by their own economic system, and all roads lead to data.
Throughout its 60 year history, art and community have been at the heart of McLean Project for the Arts. Since its founding in 1962 by a group of local women artists who wanted to bring the visual arts to the McLean community, MPA has opened its doors to a broad and growing number of artists and community members.
This is directed at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. It emulates a report summary video. It preforms the voice of a hypothetical Special Rapporteur on authoritarianism recommending the deployment of a new tool to understand the political impacts of climate change: the authoritarian sentiment framework.
Designed for the change-makers, the forward-thinkers, the progressive, and the doers. NMITE (New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering) flipped traditional education on its head, dropped the lectures and traditional exams, and made way for hands-on studio learning, in teams, on real-world challenges, set in collaboration with actual employers.
This film focuses on the complex problem of our cultural relationship with Earth. Looking at worldwide indigenous traditions it becomes clear that our modern view of Earth as inanimate (courtesy of the Western Scientific Revolution) is anomalous. Almost every prior culture–such as the First Nation cultures embraced by Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass–mythologizes and personifies natural forces.
Kimmerer’s writing stresses the respect and responsibility engrained by these traditions. It is no surprise that in abandoning them, we moderns have brought catastrophic destruction to Earth’s ecology.
A recipe for hope on desecrated earth attempts to respond to this by characterizing our current planetary moment as the result of a sorely damaged relationship between Earth and humans.
This project explores prevailing views on AI at a pivotal stage in its development. As AI sophistication grows, debates emerge around its potential sentience and humanity’s relationship with it, evoking both ancient fears and new possibilities. Using netnography, we analyzed online discourse to identify key themes and conducted a semeiotic analysis to understand their deeper significance. Based on these insights, we created a fictional origin myth for AI through a narrated video, blending human and AI perspectives in a creative speculative process.
This piece spotlights the work and talent of sculptor Emilie Benes Brzezinski. McLean Project for the Arts accepted the mantle to establish the next chapter of sculptor and longtime McLean resident Emilie Benes Brzezinski’s spectacular body of work. The gift was announced at MPA’s ArtSprings! Virtual Benefit, which was attended by Brzezinski’s children, Ian, Mark, and MSNBC journalist Mika Brzezinski.
This work was featured on MSNC. View here.
Shift to regenerative building management.
The LARR Toolkit for Local Authorities supports local authorities meet the growing demands of central government to implement regenerative principles in construction projects
Within days of the shelter-in-place mandates placed in March 2020, McLean Project for the Arts responded. Without missing a beat, our arts faculty transformed their teaching into virtual studios and carried on with our arts instruction online demonstrating the centrality of art and creativity in building resilience in us individually and in our communities.