Art Students Transform WQED Studios with Inflatable and Sonic Worlds

On April 25, 2025, School of Art students transformed Pittsburgh’s local PBS station, WQED Studios, into a vibrant playground of sensory exploration. “Tender Roots,” an intermedia arts event bridging coursework from the School of Art, School of Music, and IDeATe, was organized by professors Johannes DeYoung, Annie Hui-Hsin Hsieh, and Olivia Robinson. The evening featured interactive media pieces, architectural-scale inflatables, and spatialized sound environments developed through Senior Studio, Experimental Sound Synthesis, and Inflatables courses.

Among the standout works: a massive 40-foot inflatable dragon suspended from the studio ceiling, designed and fabricated by Sophie Chao and Jessie Chen; a towering tree-like inflatable by Ebba Shim; and a multi-channel audio installation by Vincent Wolfe that enveloped the tree in immersive sound. Alexandra Slabakis, Jenna Gomes, and Santiago Salazar contributed computationally driven pieces presented through projection and a CRT monitor display. First-year MFA student Aleena Akbar Khan also contributed to the event’s sound installations.

Read the full article on the School of Art news page.