Author: Ryan Rotella
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Sandcastles, or The Invisibility of Editing
project demo link Directors get all the credit. Whenever most people (myself included) watch a movie, they think, “Wow, that Martin Scorsese… how did he think of all this?” And while good directors do think of practically every aspect of making a movie, editors are the ones really sewing a movie all together. Thelma Schoonmaker…
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Progress Update 2: Research Findings & Reflections
Research Findings: What I Learned Since establishing my initial inquiry space, I’ve pursued a focused research trajectory that has significantly shaped my understanding of participatory performance, therapeutic theater, and the tension between spectacle and genuine emotional engagement. Drama Therapy and Applied Theatre: A Critical Distinction Following my advisor Luisa’s feedback, I explored the drama therapy…
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Designing a MoCap Narrative
I’ve been struggling with the exact narrative form I want this piece about football to have. Part of me wants to have an exact script with dialogue, fleshed out characters, and a clear narrative arc. Currently, I do not have time to do that for this project’s scope (finish in the next 2 weeks). However,…
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Becoming HyperNormal
What is a cliche? It is a phrase, regardless of its truthfulness or lack of, that we have heard ad nauseam. Many come to mind: the grass isn’t always greener on the other side, you can’t judge a book by its cover, etc. They are, of course, culturally dependent with every group of people having…
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Archiving American Football: Building a movement database
In developing my Motion Capture project on masculine movements in American football and how they provoke emotion, I’ve begun a more production-oriented phase. This stage focuses on designing a movement database: a catalog of specific gestures, stances, and sequences to be captured in motion. Characters and Embodied Roles So far, I have three loose character…
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Space as Place: Cadman Plaza Park
Documented first project for my Outside The Box class via slideshow.
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Trapped in Fragments
project code demo Each of us unfortunately is a product of our time. We all now live in a time of fragmentation. As Pinker notes, language itself is a marvelous intricate discrete combinatory system of words and logic that allows us to connect with one another, the construction of language is not in a vacuum.…
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Pre-Thesis: Best Foot Forward
Prompt: Progress update 1: Inquiry space + inspiration repository. What is an Inquiry Space? An inquiry space is essentially my creative research territory—a visual map of the fields, themes, media, and techniques that spark my curiosity and will drive me toward my thesis. Rather than diving randomly into an overwhelming amount of research, mapping my…
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Becoming a Football Player (again)
For this project of exploring masculine movements in American Football, I will be one of the characters in this project. There will be 3 main characters. One, I will play a football player, stepping back into a role that I played 14-15 years ago in high school. Two, there will be another player who is…
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A Symphony of Guessing
coding project link From the prompt, the question that stood out to me the most was: “What do [neural networks] offer as media for our internal life?” Currently, my relationship for Large Language Models is one of pure function and text, not media or art. I ask Claude to help with my code. The model…
Ryan Rotella 