Article at UConn Today: https://today.uconn.edu/2026/05/uconn-alum-directs-public-service-announcement-on-racial-profiling/ 

UConn Today: https://today.uconn.edu/2026/05/eighth-annual-senior-exhibition-highlights-dmd-capstone-projects/

Article at: https://today.uconn.edu/2025/11/uconn-student-chasing-dreams-in-tornado-alley/

July 6, 2023 | Kimberly Phillips

Josh Hirshfield was that kid in middle school who’d spend all weekend playing video games.

“I was playing on my parents’ 1997 Dell computer with 128MB of RAM, because that’s what we had at the time. Playing old titles like SimCity 4 or Roller Coaster Tycoon exposed me to the idea of creating digital virtual worlds,” he says. “The one that really blew my mind was Spore by EA. It introduced me to this world of 3D design where you can make buildings and creatures, animals and spaceships all from your computer.”

When Hirshfield ’21 (SFA) went back as an adult to visit his seventh and eighth grade teachers and told them he now makes video games, no one was surprised.

“My whole life I secretly wanted to make video games but was scared. I didn’t think it was something that I was allowed to do because it seemed too fun,” he says.

Now, almost every day is fun for the Stamford native who just earned his MFA in game design from NYU, has his own independent studio, is working with the Neag School of Education to create educational software, and has interviewed for senior-level positions at some of the largest companies in the industry – at 24 years old.

“For a lot of my life, I thought I would do things around video games, like make the art or make the music for video games. It was only once I had a high school class in game development that I realized there was a path for building video games,” he says, explaining that class prompted him to consider colleges with game design programs, which led him to UConn’s Digital Media & Design.

“The idea that I could get a degree where one of the words in the degree is ‘games’ is really amazing and those programs are hard to find,” Hirshfield says. “UConn has one, it was accessible, and my parents loved it when I told them I wanted to make video games. Finding and pursuing a passion really matters to me and my family.”

As an undergrad, Hirshfield loaded his schedule – almost overloading it – with independent studies, one year even acing all his classes and adding 48 credits to his transcript. He says he would pair a class like Interactive Storytelling with an independent study to produce projects that paralleled the lessons learned in class.

Another independent study coupled him with the School of Business to create an interactive training program for the Connecticut Community for Addiction Recovery. That program, The Recovery Files, aims to train recovery coaches in what to say – or not say – by presenting them with interactive sample text messages for a variety of scenarios.

“Most video games are fun. Most are about bringing enrichment to your life. But some tell sad stories just like film or TV,” he says. “And serious games are this idea that by sharing an experience you can perform social action. The idea of The Recovery Files was that you would play it and the serious function of the game was to train and enrich the minds of those who are going to help others.”

Hirshfield says he cares deeply about this genre of gaming and wants the opportunity to make a difference, like with Courtroom 600 – a production from Greenhouse Studios and other UConn departments to document the Nuremberg Trials – which Hirshfield worked on one semester while an undergrad.

Then there are other times when gaming just needs to be about gaming – an escape from reality.

“I get made fun of a lot because I care about social action games and then I go and make the most stereotypical video game ever,” he says of the first-person shooter game Godwalker, in which the idea is to shoot the bad guys as quickly as possible to gain strength.

“It’s not very long, it’s not very big, but I did make it on my own,” he explains. “I didn’t buy any assets. I didn’t have anyone make anything else. It all came from my computer and my brain, and to me that’s an invaluable piece of work to have. You can present it to someone and say, ‘This is something that I made, and I think it’s really cool.’”

He told people a variation of that in April when he trekked to Troy, New York, to demo Godwalker at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s annual GameFest, an event that draws game designers from throughout the Northeast to compete for a series of awards – real-life awards, not ones handed out in a game world after virtual play.

“The first game I ever made, Aether, went to RPI GameFest because I just wanted to show it to people and see how they liked it. The judges ended up giving it the award for Best in Game Feel, which is really cool,” he says of the game that was developed mostly during high school and finished at UConn.

Aether received acclaim in 2018. This year, Godwalker earned the award for Excellence in Design, while Lexy Vecchio ’23 MFA received the Impact Award for Here There Be Bears.

“The judges are from throughout the industry, and you get some awesome validation from external sources that aren’t just your friends,” Hirshfield says. “I hate having an ego, but it’s cool that I can say I’m pretty good at the thing I do.”

While he now mulls the question of what comes next, Hirshfield notes that a friend is the person at the New York Times who makes sure games like Wordle and Spelling Bee come out on time every day.

“What does a game designer actually do,” he asks. “Do you think that the New York Times crossword puzzle just pops into existence? We work in the background. A good design is not something you notice.”

UConn Today Article: https://today.uconn.edu/2023/07/childhood-dream-becomes-reality-for-video-gamer-turned-designer/ 

May 18, 2023 | Combined Reports

Northeast Human Rights Film Festival organizers hope the impact of this week’s three-day festival at UConn extends beyond the theater experience and calls audiences to take action.

An expansion of the Human Rights Film & Digital Media Initiative established in 2020 by the leaders of the Human Rights Institute, Digital Media & Design department, and Dodd Human Rights Impact, the inaugural film festival aims to connect filmmakers, human rights advocates, and community groups with the common goal of sustained, transformational impact.

Festival Co-Director and Donna M. Krenicki Professor for Design and Digital Media Heather Elliott-Famularo, department head for Digital Media & Design, says the ideal outcome of the festival is that people will walk away afterward and feel impassioned to do more, perhaps volunteer for a community effort, lobby politicians, donate to a related organization, or participate in campaigns. The ultimate hope is to inspire and motivate people to translate their passion into action.

Among the festival’s full schedule of free events are screenings of: “The Territory” on Friday night, an authentic portrait of an Indigenous community’s fight to protect their ecosystem from illegal deforestation in Brazil; two films on Saturday, “Clarissa’s Battle,” the story of the fight for universal child care and early childhood education for low-income families, and “A Reckoning in Boston,” which highlights the systemic racism and economic inequities in Boston; and “Midnight Traveler” on Sunday, which shares the dangerous trek of an Afghan family as they seek refuge in Europe.

“While the films’ themes may be very different, the issues addressed are things we can all relate to. The films address a wide spectrum of human rights concerns,” says Kathryn Libal, festival co-director and Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute director/Dodd Human Rights Impact interim director. “It’s critical for us to think about what fundamental rights we have as human beings within an increasingly interconnected world.”

Elliott-Famularo explains that the films use a participatory approach to filmmaking, in which the filmmaker engages directly with the subject and reveals their role in the film, instead of using a third-person narration or standing on the sidelines.

“Participatory documentary filmmaking requires a level of vulnerability by both the filmmaker and the participants in the film, who are often collaborative partners in the filmmaking process rather than passive ‘subjects.’ It also inherently reveals the power of media to invoke real change, because the audience can essentially see the film being made on screen. This happens, for example, when James Rutenbeck, director of ‘A Reckoning in Boston,’ shares that he would make an entirely different film due to the relationships he built with Carl Chandler and Kafi Dixon and when Hassan Fazali directly speaks about both his role as a filmmaker – and an asylum seeker – in ‘Midnight Traveler,’” Elliott-Famularo says.

“For filmmakers committed to impact work, building trust within communities is essential. Each of the films we selected shows how collaboration and a commitment to social change elevates a film from a documentation of events to an opportunity for continued advocacy work,” says Erica Laplante ’22 Ph.D., festival co-organizer and postdoctoral research associate at the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute. “By pairing these films with impact events at the festival, we can further inspire action beyond the screen, through community partnerships and relationships.”

Each of the four award-winning films will be accompanied by a unique impact event, featuring the filmmaker and others connected to the project or the topic. For example, following the screening of “A Reckoning in Boston,” there will be a dinner and Encounters Dialogue, during which the community will engage in small group discussions around the issues of housing and racial justice raised in the film.

In addition to the four invited films, the festival concludes with a Sunday evening performance of the multimedia puppetry project, “Azad,” recipient of the inaugural UConn Global Affairs Digital Media Residency awarded by Global Affairs, Dodd Human Rights Impact, and the Levant Foundation.

For the residency, “Azad” writer/performer Sona Tatoyan and her crew has spent two weeks at UConn workshopping the show that uses her great-great-grandfather’s handmade Karagöz puppets to tell the story of her family, the Armenian genocide, and contemporary Aleppo. “Azad” will be performed at the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry, followed by a closing reception for the festival.

“Building on UConn’s 25-year history of human rights work and our new DMD major in film production, we have the possibility to make UConn a national leader in this kind of impact work for film and digital media,” Elliott-Famularo says. “The Northeast Human Rights Film Festival is the next step to realizing that goal.”

Find a full list of events at the Northeast Human Rights Film Festival website. Tickets are free and open to the public but must be reserved via TicketLeap. The festival is presented by the School of Fine Arts and the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute, with generous philanthropic support from NICABM, the National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine.

 

 

UConn Today Article: https://today.uconn.edu/2023/05/northeast-human-rights-film-festival-to-showcase-documentaries-rally-audiences-to-action/

April 27, 2023 | Kimberly Phillips

Years beyond their middle and high school careers – in one case by nearly two decades – and they’re still listening to their teachers.

Kelsey Tynik ’12 (SFA), ’23 MFA says she often draws on skills gained from her middle school home economics teacher, and Giana Adragna ’23 (SFA) points to high school graphic and web design classes as strong influences in her work today.

In the backstory to her latest project, Lexy Vecchio ’23 MFA mentions the teacher, not even from her own school, who came to her aid when she was at her most vulnerable, and Zaire Diaz ’23 (SFA) smiles broadly when she recalls that a high school teacher bestowed on her the nickname DRC, a happy moment in otherwise challenging teenage years.

As graduating students from Digital Media & Design and the Art and Art History department, each with work on display in three on-campus exhibitions this month, these four might have produced vastly different final projects, but they’re connected – like so many who’ve drawn on previous experiences for inspiration – to their formative pasts.

Playtime as work time

With an undergraduate degree in illustration and art history from UConn, Tynik for many years worked in New York City as a window decorator for a contemporary fashion brand. Seeking a break, she left that job to nanny young children, putting her in the position of watching kids at play and considering how that might look for her.

“I noticed with the kids that their version of play is fun, light, and fearless. They’ll try anything,” she says. “But there’s a system to their play that’s structured yet freeing at the same time.”

As she reconnected to her painting roots, Tynik says she longed to “pluck my work off the wall and break the frame.” That’s when she started to play, taking painted canvas off the stretcher and sewing it into shapes large and small to create 3D wall paintings, like “And cry at the same time when a capering circus clown approaches,” which is on display at the William Benton Museum of Art.

She says she uses Stephen King novels – she’s a fan of horror novels and their own playful structure – as inspiration not just for her work, but also the titles for many of her pieces. In the case of “Capering Clown,” it looks like the remnants of a mischievous character that’s sucked itself into a rainbow of color.

“You know you want to get closer, but you don’t want to get too close in a way,” Tynik says, describing her work. “I like that boundary. It’s tricky when a lot of your work looks fun and friendly, because it is that, but it’s also important to have a boundary between the fun and the viewer. My goal is for people to say, ‘I want to touch it, but I don’t think I should.’”

Tynik also includes carved wood in her pieces, which means she built for herself not just a sewing area but also an enclosed grinding booth with a dust removal system in her work studio.

“It’s wild actually, and I feel like so much has come back to me that feels so familiar,” she says of the skills she gained early on in school. “Habits that I learned as a child, they’ve come back up in a professional sense.”

A little help to plan the big day

When everyone in Adragna’s extended family gets together, she says they total about 50 members, that’s including 17 first cousins, their spouses, and their children. Together, they comprise a large Italian family that likes to celebrate good times, oftentimes dancing the night away.

“We have a wedding almost every year,” Adragna says. “Even if we’re not in a wedding, we’re there for all the events. We love weddings in my family. We go all out.”

As Adragna set to designing an undergraduate DMD project that demonstrates her mastery of web and interactive media, she says she thought about her role as co-maid of honor in her sister’s upcoming nuptials – she’s sharing the job with her other sister – and her place in the wedding parties of seven previous ceremonies.

She also noted that her cousin is marrying this August and is in the throes of planning, so why not design an app that would be meaningful, helpful, relatable, and tied to the very thing in which her family has expertise.

“Jade Wedding Journal,” on display in the Jorgensen Gallery, allows wedding guests to participate in the planning process, differing it from the legions of other apps that help brides and grooms check off items on their to-do lists.

The app allows guests to RSVP, post pictures and updates on a feed, and even make vendor recommendations to the hosts – an idea that came from Adragna’s mom. But its biggest asset might just be guests’ ability to request a specific table and see the table seating arrangement.

“We had a second cousin who had a wedding last year and we didn’t know until we got there if we’d be sitting together as an immediate family. It would have been nice to have that verification beforehand,” she says.

The feature also would be helpful if a guest is a friend from high school, who might not know many family members and who would like to see whether other friends from high school are at their table, Adragna says, explaining that she’s always been a savvy planner and wanted her project to have the ability to relieve the stress of a host who might not be.

“Jade, the stone, means growth and prosperity and new beginnings,” she says of the app’s name. “Green is also a color of growth and the earthtones really spoke to me with the romance of it all. With the name and the color scheme, I really wanted them to be something that’s very meaningful.”

Experiencing PTSD through gaming

Vecchio used to get panic attacks in school and suffered from emetophobia, or the fear of vomiting, that was so severe, she says, if a fellow student threw up in a bathroom, she wouldn’t talk to the person for a week or ever again use those facilities.

Years of misdiagnoses plagued much of her later childhood, she says, and only in her older teenage years did doctors connect the behavioral issues to PTSD that resulted from a skiing accident she had when she was 11 and broke her hip after attempting a maneuver she’d seen some snowboarders do.

She landed the trick and had only 20 feet to stop before going over a cliff, she recalls, explaining that in the process of stopping she snapped her femur in half, missing her femoral artery by a centimeter, and blacked out off the trail in an isolated area.

“I don’t know exactly how long I was on the mountain. From what I understand, it was probably two hours since I’d only done one ski run. There’s a lot of time dilation I really don’t remember, but I was calling for help for so long,” she says, explaining she didn’t even know she was hurt until she tried to stand.

A child about her age eventually heard her calls, and they sought their teacher for help and later the ski patrol. Vecchio was in a wheelchair for three months and on crutches another three, yet everyone expected that given the presumed resiliency of an 11-year-old, she’d bounce back.

Then entered her behavioral issues.

Her therapist helped her discover the panic attacks were triggered by situations that threatened isolation, she explains, and the emetophobia likely resulted because over those two hours on the mountain certain bodily functions probably started to shut down along the vagus nerve, causing severe stomach pain that she never consciously felt thanks to the trauma.

Now as a DMD graduate student looking for a final project, she knew she wanted to produce an embodied experience geared toward those with a disability, Vecchio says. When an initial idea was thwarted during pandemic shutdowns, she turned to personal experience.

“Here There Be Bears” is an escape-room style, first-person video game on display at the Benton that’s shown mostly in flashback and traps the player in a cave with a bear.

“One of the reasons we chose a cave is because of its isolation factor,” she says. “You’re isolated, alone, mimicking when I was 11. Cellphones were not a thing then, so there was no way to call for help and in a cave cellphones don’t work.”

Vecchio says she wanted to use an accident-based trauma because it’s an isolated event, and most of the population won’t experience PTSD from an accident like the one portrayed – getting trapped in a cave with a bear.

“In the game, you are not a sexual assault victim or a combat veteran, both of which comprise the majority of those with PTSD,” she says, noting that despite PTSD being widely known about people don’t really understand it.

“It’s a misconception that people who haven’t seen combat can’t really get PTSD,” she says, “and PTSD is so often used as a joke, like when people say, ‘I was triggered by that.’ Those misconceptions persist so people don’t understand what PTSD means or how it manifests in people who aren’t your stereotypical post-traumatic stress survivor.”

Changing the past by drawing it

Diaz describes herself as always being artsy, but she didn’t get to study art until coming to UConn.

She attended a high school that centered on nursing, which imprinted the importance of giving blood and knowing CPR, she says, but didn’t give her much in the way of art lessons, save a health teacher who allowed Diaz to draw, label, and describe the function of the heart instead of taking a multiple-choice test.

Another teacher nicknamed her DRC, because the country Zaire is now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Home is where she got to create characters – how they look, their backstories, their families – and put them in more positive situations than she was experiencing at school, where not only was she studying a field outside her interest, but she also was navigating her gender identity.

“When I came out as nonbinary and demisexual, I tried to tell a teacher or two who I trusted, but they kind of shut it down and weren’t really accepting of my coming out,” Diaz says. “Because of that I shut myself out and stayed in the closet. Growing up, kids talked about boys and girls and dating, and for me I didn’t feel any of this. People made it seem like I was the strange one because I wasn’t thinking about being intimate or dating.”

The characters she created, “I used them to cope and illustrate things that I wished people would do or how I hoped people would have reacted when I came out because it wasn’t really great, unfortunately,” she adds.

Diaz says the purpose of “A Confession In March,” her undergraduate graphic novel that’s on display in the Art Building, is to give those who are still figuring out their identity a way to feel safe.

“In the story, the main character, Wolfgang, is starting to develop feelings for his best friend. He’s never felt emotions toward other people before that were outside of being platonic and he’s like, ‘Oh, my goodness, what is this?’ I used Wolfgang as a lens of what I went through,” Diaz says, reinforcing that the purpose of the story is for “people to realize they’re valid, whether they’re straight, gay, bi, demi, ace, like I am.”

In a way, she might very well be saving a life, in a same-but-different-way as a nurse.

“I always want my art to be a place where someone feels comfortable and valid, because I never felt that and I want people to feel that. When you don’t have support, you feel alone. I always, especially through my art, want someone to look at it and say, ‘Someone’s out there for me.’”

 

The 2023 Studio Art and Digital Media & Design MFA Thesis Exhibition – “Breadcrumb Journeys” for DMD and “Closed Switch” for studio art – is open at the William Benton Museum of Art through May 7. The 2023 UConn DMD BFA Senior Exhibition “Limitless” is open at the Jorgensen Gallery at the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts through April 28. The 2023 Department of Art and Art History BFA Senior Exhibition is open in the Art Building in the Fine Arts Complex through April 28.

UConn Today Article: https://today.uconn.edu/2023/04/art-dmd-students-look-to-formative-years-for-inspiration-today/