The Micro Expressions [20] event, hosted by transmedia [21] seniors Kevin Sampaio and Danny Peña, took place this past Saturday night, December 5th at Spark Contemporary Art Space [22]. Students were invited to showcase all forms of art such as their poetry, music, video art, sculptures, photos and paintings.
“Micro Expressions is a show that me and Danny Peña came up with independently to try and organize something that allowed a lot of artists we know to show people what they have been up to,” says Sampaio. “We call it Micro Expressions because we thought that these works of art would be a small part of every artist’s work here and we hoped that these pieces would be a way of showing others what they really represented and wanted to convey to others.”
Starting at 8 o’clock, students started piling into the basement of the Spark Contemporary Art Space where there were bright Christmas lights above a grand stage and a cotton candy machine. Sampaio started off the night by introducing poets to the stage, stating that the poetry would be followed by performances from the bands Minnoe [23], Petite League [24] and 99Sublime [25].
Students enjoyed some cotton candy as they listened to the poetry and music from the various talented and artistic Syracuse University student students. The first student on stage to perform poetry was a student named Connor, who started his poetry by reading an excerpt from a book he had bought at the bookstore called ‘The Bird Watcher’s Journal’ by K. White. Connor described how he was surprised by the fact that there was only one excerpt in the journal, and he was curious to know why the writer – K. White – had stopped writing.
“And that was it,” Connor says. “That’s all that was written in here. It left me thinking, why did he stop…I want to understand why there is just one entry. I want to understand why he knew so much about bird watching… And then I started to think about why I want to understand things, and why I want to know about things.”
The night ended with loud, eclectic rock music from all three talented feature bands. Sampaio states, “I think the show went fantastically better than we thought it would go.” He adds, “I feel like this [the event] was pretty successful and hope that others feel the same way. We certainly feel it was successful enough that we’ll be having another show next semester.”
