Factory Media Centre is thrilled to present our 19th Annual Members’ Screening!
Established in 2005, our Members Screening showcases the creative works of our community of Members, and highlights a selection of Hamilton’s diverse new media artwork.
The 19th Annual Members Screening will be on view at Farside Bar in downtown Hamilton for the month of February. Thank you to all that came to our annual live watch party!
Featuring works by:
Noelle Wharton-Ayer, Megan Arnold, Viridian Sylvae, Sandra Lim, jars hooch, Natalie Hunter, Serena Zena Mak Walk and Ben Cumming, Charlie Saltzman, Amelia Doty, and Koko Kumazawa, Charlie Star, Luke Mistruzzi, Alex Maclean, Travis Nguyen, Adrien Crossman, and Emma Eichenberg
Program
Noelle Wharton-Ayer, La cueillette
La cueillette is inspired by common archives, gift-giving, and our shared experiences of the natural world. It is based on an inherited collection of natural objects (driftwood, shells, seeds) that the artist reproduced as drawings and 3D-printed replicas. The animation presents speculative narratives based on interactions between the original objects and their copies, drawing on a collage sensibility activated by movement and repetition. La cueillette is the artist’s first stop-motion animation, completed under the mentorship of multimedia artist Carol-Ann Belzil-Normand. Production of the project was completed at the artist-run centres la Bande Vidéo and la Chambre Blanche in Québec City.
Born in Toronto in 1987, Noelle Wharton-Ayer is a multidisciplinary artist currently living and working in Quebec City. Her practice considers relationships between exterior botanical spaces and interior emotional states, utilizing the collage process as a methodology engaging both real and imaginary spaces. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in visual arts from York University and a Master’s degree in visual arts from Université Laval. Noelle’s work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in Ontario, Quebec, and Europe. Her latest project Bedfellows was exhibited at the artist-run centres VU Photo and Martha Street Studio in 2024 and 2025.
Megan Arnold, 8 Sick Tricks with Megan Arnold: Pro Skater
The artist demonstrates 8 gnarly skateboard tricks at the local park.
Megan Arnold is an artist who wants to make you laugh and cry and cringe. She makes affective performances, videos, pop songs, and drawings that use humour as a coping mechanism to deal with anxiety in the face of an impending apocalypse. Much of their practice is rooted in cabaret and bar entertainment, which is the great irony of their life as someone who likes to go to bed at 9pm.
Viridian Sylvae, Somnolence
Somnolence is a student project from my Master of Arts in Media Studies program at The New School in Manhattan, for a course in the Parsons Design Technology department called “Digital Dialect”. The film short is an hallucinatory dream of main character Luci, a cat-girl called to a Chalice by voices in her head. Upon injecting herself before the Chalice altar, the world falls out from under her feet. Made entirely in Cinema4D and Ableton Live.
Viridian Sylvae is a multimedia artist and scholar from Lake Tahoe, California, and presently a PhD student in Communication, New Media and Cultural Studies at McMaster University. Her scholarly and artistic works act together to form an interdisciplinary interrogation of transsexual precarity and miasmas of social exclusion.
Sandra Lim, Still Life
Part of the Unseen City urban commute series one minute films, Still Life is a poetic photo montage film exploring themes of solitude, longing, and connection in urban spaces. Inspired by a walk through the city with my sister, who noticed a seemingly unremarkable moment, the simple narrative unfolds against the backdrop of an ice cream shop. Through a sequence of still photographs, the film captures the quiet rhythms of city life through the gaze of an unexpected observer. Like other short films in the series, Still Life invites viewers to look beyond the obvious and consider the unspoken narratives that shape the city’s fabric.
Lim currently lectures on Politics and Film at Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada. She holds a PhD in Art and Design for the Moving Image, earned at Brighton University in the UK during the early 2000s, a period marked by the digital revolution and a revival of British avant-garde traditions. Her PhD and practice-based moving image work were described by her examiner Malcolm Le Grice as “”highly original,”” making a significant contributing to the tradition of British structural-materialist film. Mentored by Mick Hartney, another key figure in the 1970s- 1990’s video art movement, Lim’s work blends avant-garde cinema traditions with performative and musical elements. She also composes the music and sound design for her films, drawing on her classical piano training. Her sister produces many of her films.
jars hooch, trying.to.disappear.completely
sometimes you want to disappear, completely
so no one can see you
so you don’t have to be you
getting lost
in the background
j a r s is a furry creature born in the northern outpost of winnipeg, and resides in the industrial wastelands of the gtha. they have multiple degrees and various accolades, many of whichare completely fictional. j a r s is a prolific maker, and more than anything loves to create weird and queer thing-objects. They are one half of the furry video-game marriage/collective know as resnijars, and their games can be found on steam and itch.io
Natalie Hunter, Even the lightest touch can leave a lasting trace
Even the lightest touch can leave a lasting trace attempts to unravel the complexities of time, light, and motion, human bonds and the fragility of memory through an embodied material exploration in photo-based silk, light, air movement, and sculpture in the round. Kinetic in nature delicate translucent prints on silk billow and shift with moving air currents in the room. The imagery depicts my mother and I having a wordless conversation with through hand gestures, shadows, and light. Caught between stillness and motion these gestures in space attempt to capture what cannot be kept; a breath expelled, sunlight as it moves across a space through time, a human gesture, or the sensations of a memory caught in the mind. Our bodies constantly flow through spaces everyday, and our breath is just as delicate and weightless as the light that envelopes these spaces. Flowing on air currents Even the lightest touch can leave a lasting trace is as elusive as trying to catch the wind. Revealing the inherent breath of the architectural space they occupy.
Natalie Hunter is from Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Working across photography, installation, sculpture, and the moving image, she is mostly known for her multilayered and experiential photo-based installations on transparent film. Her studio practice engages with the poetics of time, memory, temporality, chance, perception, the archive, and the senses – with an emphasis on embodied experience, perception, materiality, personal memory, and identity.
Serena Zena Mak Walk and Ben Cumming, Beuford the Pigeon in Gripping Whisper
In this episode of Beuford the Pigeon, Beuford can’t seem to understand the rules of the library.
Serena Zena Mak Walk (she/her) is an emerging artist and curator based in Canada. Her multidisciplinary practice delves into the lived experiences and cultural narratives of the Asian diaspora. Central to her work are themes of Eco- and Asian- futurism. Her practice blends the tangible and the intangible, ranging from textiles to extended-reality. Her work is known for its bold use of colour and texture, often drawing on organic forms. When she’s not in the studio, Serena enjoys illustrating and animating a character called Beuford the Pigeon in a collaborative project with her partner. Ben Cumming (he/him) is an emerging interdisciplinary artist based in Hamilton. His practice explores the environmental changes on our planet. Central to his work is ideas of materiality and process. His practice involves ceramic and new tech, exploring the tension between natural resources and emergent media. Ben received his BFA from the McMaster University Studio arts program. Since graduation he has continued to work within Mcmaster as an instructional assistant, which involves aiding students. He has also been dedicated to expanding his own practice as a member of the Hamilton arts, recently working with Center 3 and screening his latest animation as part of the Fluxus festival, supported by Factory Media center, Hamilton Artist Inc, and McMaster University.
Charlie Saltzman, Amelia Doty, and Koko Kumazawa, The Word is a Hug
The Word is a Hug (2024) is about building a queer life. The film follows three friends finding comfort in the home that they create together. From struggling to feel seen in their identities, the friends learn to love themselves through loving each other. The film portrays the undervalued love that is held in platonic queer friendships. The display of living freely and queerly in unlikely (but likely) places allows others to imagine queer life in any place. This is how it feels to be queer sometimes — we must build our homes, families, and selves from scratch in the middle of nowhere.
Charlie Saltzman (he/him), Amelia Doty (she/her), and Koko Kumazawa (they/them) are a collective of queer, gender-diverse interdisciplinary artists. Individually, each artist’s practice centers on various mediums, including film, photography, poetry, printmaking, and illustration. Together, the collective harnesses the vast skills of each member to create multimedia work around the focal topic of queerness. Their work tackles themes of self-acceptance, community, and belonging, while coming of age as a queer person.
Charlie Star, No One’s Little Bam Bam
No One’s Little Bam Bam is an animated video and mashup remix that uses elements from the 1982 hit song, Bam Bam by Sister Nancy and the song No One’s Little Girl by The Raincoats, also released the same year. The work is an exploration of glitch, digital collage, and astrological interpretation, reflecting intersecting dimensions of music, race, and gender.
Charlie Star is an interdisciplinary artist, educator and cultural worker who constellates astrology, Black diasporic studies, collage, DJ scholarship and experimental sound design to create layered and multidimensional artistic expressions.
Luke Mistruzzi, Uncle Bardo
Through an innovative blend of documentary and experimental stop-motion animation, Uncle Bardo delves into the mind of an estranged family member who has undergone a near-death experience and awakens lost between two worlds.
Luke works with time based media and projections utilizing stop-motion, documentary, cinematography, and compositing techniques.
Alex Maclean, Expected Turbulent Stained Glass
The music was made with a combination of modular synth and drum machine. Generative techniques were used to write the various sonic elements. The visuals were created with Houdini and TouchDesigner. A 3D asset was created first and then effects were applied to manipulate it in time with the audio.
I am a multidisciplinary creator working at the intersection of technology, art, and community engagement. As a software developer, I specialize in crafting innovative solutions that leverage cutting-edge technologies like AR, VR, and robotics to deliver immersive, interactive experiences. My background in new media art drives my passion for exploring the convergence of technology and storytelling, often through installations that engage and inspire audiences.
Travis Nguyen, Portrait of Poppy
Portrait of Poppy explores love from a different angle – where one must let go. It also touches on the Medical Assistance in Dying program in Canada.
Travis Nguyen is a writer/director based in Toronto. He’s currently working as a Story Analyst for an indie film studio.
Adrien Crossman, Queer Club Supercut
Excerpt of a long form supercut video compilation of queer bars in film and television spanning the 1980s until the present.
Adrien Crossman is a queer and non-binary white settler artist, educator, and curator currently residing on the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples in Hamilton, Ontario. They hold an MFA in Visual Art from the University of Windsor (2018), and a BFA in Integrated Media with a Minor in Digital and Media Studies from OCAD University (2012). Crossman is interested in the affective qualities of queerness, investigating how queerness can be felt through specific aesthetics and sensibilities. In addition to having exhibited across Canada and internationally, Adrien co-founded and co-runs the online arts publication Off Centre. Crossman is an Assistant Professor in the School of the Arts at McMaster University.
Emma Eichenberg, sewers v.1
Comprised from digital scans of manhole covers taken in the Beasley area and hand drawn animations, sewers v.1 is a visualized map of water flow within a small section of Hamilton’s sewer system.
Emma Eichenberg (she/her) is an artist residing in the occupied territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee, and Mississaugas, known as Hamilton, ON. Her practice primarily consists of painting and printmaking, where she conceptually engages with the deterioration and changes in her vision due to an eye condition. Eichenberg’s shifting perceptions of colours inform material exploration through creating her own oil paints as a method of regaining visual control. Alongside painting, Emma’s print work contrasts her conceptual focuses and exists as an outlet for exploratory silliness and cynicism.
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