Jessica Faith Hayden is a first year graduate student in UCSC’s Digital Arts and New Media MFA Program. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Technocultural Studies with highest honors as a Kresge College individual studies major at UCSC by combining courses from the disciplines of Film and Digital Media, Sociology, and Community Studies into scholarly work toward the completion of a unique interdisciplanary degree. In addition to her extensive coursework at UCSC, Jessica attended both the University of Utah and Westminster College, where she developed an expansive and varied artistic background in visual arts, theater arts, music and creative writing.

 

Jessica’s scholarly research seeks to incorporate artistic creative work that involves the use of a variety of mediums (video, audio, flash animation, and composite imaging), to consider issues of stereotype and mythology as they relate to the body, illness, age and disability. As a unifying element, Jessica’s work relies on socio-anthropological metaphors that surround the conception of the body as a literal territory to be explored, mapped and conquered by medical science. Jessica’s work is both participatory and performative, and takes into consideration both personal and cultural narratives of pain, dysfunction and desire. Her aim in creating this work is to examine points of contrast and similarity between experiences of the public and private, of ability and disability, of stereotype and individuality, and of the corporeal and metaphorical.

 

In addition to her work as an audio-visual digital artist, Jessica has performed extensively both as a professional actor and as a musician. As an actor and director, Jessica has worked with Stage Right Theater Company, Pioneer Theater Company and Salt Lake Acting Company, and served as founding board chair and artistic director for Salt Lake Experimental Theater Company. As a musician, Jessica was lead guitarist and songwriter for the SubMersians surf rock band, bassist for The Shockwaves rock band, and guitarist and vocalist for The Waite rock-fusion band. She has performed with these groups throughout the state of California at numerous public festivals, civic events, clubs and corporate parties. Jessica has also published creative written work in several literary journals, including the Private Eye and Elipsis Literary Magazine.

 

Jessica’s current work is centered around the conception of a collaborative and performative oral history project that aims to empower senior citizens by creating assistive technologies and workshops that allow for the organic capture of personal narratives and audiobiographical memoirs. Her work in this area has been conceptualized with Professor Andrea Steiner of the Community Studies Department at UCSC, who currently serves as an advisor and creative partner in Jessica’s scholarly endeavors. Jessica’s work in the area of creative oral history creation is based on the belief that digital technologies are valuable tools that have much to offer older community members who, as a group, have been traditionally disinfranchised by new technologies. She aims to create work that will generate a safe space for personal creative expression in a way that is collaborative, accessible, fun and empowering.

 

Jessica is currently working on a grant for the Creative Work Fund, and hopes to offer a workshop in digital memory creation in summer 2009 through collaborative effort with The Cabrillo Stroke Center and the Louden Nelson Community Center. It is Jessica's hope that this forum will help senior citizens actively engage the issues surrounding aging, age perception and identity in modern society, and will further serve to empower the use of digital technologies for the purposes of creative self expression.