Experimental Film Installation Debuts at UC Irvine's Middle Earth’s Pippin Recreation Center

New public art project explores student life, memory, and culture through multiscreen video

The Department of Art at UC Irvine, in partnership with Undergraduate Housing, presented a new public art installation at Middle Earth’s Pippin Recreation Center showcasing student-made experimental films.

Developed through Art 130A: Projects in New Technology, taught by Zebulon Zang, the project features a multiscreen video wall exploring the intersection of personal narrative and institutional memory. The exhibition invites viewers to reflect on UC Irvine’s evolving identity through the lens of student artists who draw on archival research, storytelling and new media techniques. Themes range from community and activism to architectural legacy and cultural memory.

“This project is the third fabulous iteration of our long-standing partnership with Student Housing, and the first at Middle Earth,” said Jesse Colin Jackson, associate dean of research and innovation and executive director of the Beall Center for Art + Technology. “Professor Emerita of Art Mara Lonner and I previously worked with Lou Gill from Undergraduate Housing to facilitate a mural and a suspended sculpture at Mesa Court. I'm so pleased to see this partnership extended with Zebulon Zang.”

Image: Students and community members gather to watch student films.

Through the course, students uncovered the diversity of life and history at UC Irvine and reflected it through their own personal and cultural experiences at the university today.

 “The featured video works range from discovering the best unknown places to hang out on campus, to undoing the perception of UC Irvine as a ‘social dead’ school, and celebrating how the many student communities contribute to the cultural life of the institution,” said Zang. “This project was made possible through the collaborative efforts of Lou Gill, who provided a public location for the works to be displayed, one where the focus on student life could be meaningfully forefronted and shared with incoming UC Irvine students.”

Special thanks to Lou Gill, senior director of Undergraduate Housing and Residential Life, for his continued support of student-centered creative expression. To learn more about the Department of Art, visit art.arts.uci.edu.