3 minute read
In Brief Casting Light on Her Custom-Designed Major
In her capstone presentation to nearly 40 attendees, Ta’Liyah Thomas talked about her journey into the custom-designed major program, how she developed her major and presented an introduction to her capstone project, “(In)Visible Spectrum: A Journey of Light, Color, and Emotion Hidden in Plain Sight,” a 9-month-long process that culminated in an exhibition at Bentley Hall; the project included large-scale photography and two home theater projection rooms playing her multimedia work.
A big fan of behind-thescenes videos, Ta’Liyah or T.T., creative media studies ‘24, provided the audience an inside look at her own educational path, an exploration of her work in light and color, film, photography and design.
As a young child, T.T. had a habit of walking off with her mother’s camera to snap photos. As a teen, she loved television and movies about the supernatural. She had tried her hand at robotics and dabbled in computer science. And she had an affinity for the lighting section at Home Depot. But coming into Drexel, she was in the dark on how to blend her interests in art, technology and media.
So, she started off in electrical engineering.
Science, she joked, was not her thing. While she despised chemistry and was not fond of physics 1, classes in electrical engineering in the real world and engineering design lit something in her; she realized she wanted to create and design art with the use of technology.
“When a door closes, T.T. busts open a window,” says Dr. Katie Barak, associate director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Inquiry. Joining CSDN allowed T.T. to morph her major from television advertising and special effects to event design and promotion and finally choosing creative media studies. She took courses in photography, video production and theater and “I solidified an unspoken theme in my major: lighting.”
As a capstone project, T.T. knew she wanted to create an immersive exhibition. She researched lighting in countless shows and movies and then set out to capture content, always keeping digital and film cameras on her. Then she began planning a visual display featuring original photographs and videos centered around the light and color we encounter in our lives.
“The last thing I want is a purely polished item,” she wrote down and then told the crowd. “I want you to experience this with me. I need you to. I need you to come on this journey with me on how different light can look. It’s different in film. It’s different in photo. It’s different in theatre. It’s different in art … I want people to see how light can affect us.
It needs to be about light.”
When attendees were finished looking at her photography and watching her home theater projections, she asked them to fill out a form asking how people were influenced by her work.
“Did anything in this exhibition touch you emotionally?” she asks. “Even if you are angry, let me know. That means I did my job.”
