UBC Okanagan students light up the night with digital art show

Published 5:00 am Tuesday, December 16, 2025

A Kelowna arts project is allowing post-secondary students to take centre-stage in making a vibrant city centre.

The show Digital Fragments features art pieces from UBC Okanagan’s advanced media class as part of the ongoing Light Up Kelowna project, which gives a platform to local and student artists.

The project is a collaboration between the Arts Council of the Central Okanagan (ARTSCO), UBCO faculty of creative and critical studies as well as the City of Kelowna.

Digital Fragments features pieces from UBCO’s advanced media class in the form of short videos shown in a variety of media.

“In this exhibition, you see a broad variety of media approaches, from animation to 3D and even some games,” Aleksandra Dulic, associate professor at UBCO, said.

Students’ artwork is showcased in the heart of downtown, at the back of the Kelowna Community Theatre. While they may not be as eye-catching during the day, at night, a series of screens light up with the creative designs done by the students.

Pieces in the show contain messages personal to the students. Fourth-year media studies student Cadence Myroniuk created the piece, Dance of the Moon Jellyfish, a scene with shifting colours that is reminiscent of one of her favourite B.C. attractions, the Vancouver Aquarium.

“I find the Jellyfish exhibit my favourite at Vancouver, and I always find it sort of calming, and I really want to bring that to Kelowna,” she said.

Myroniuk, like all her classmates, spent the fall semester working on the project. One challenging aspect during the piece’s creation was emulating the movement patterns of the jellyfish.

Another piece in the Digital Fragments collection is third-year fine arts student Lorenzo Rodrigues’ CONNECTION, which focuses on the contemporary debate on the people’s emotional reliance on AI chatbots.

“The message is kind of like, ‘don’t rely on a chatbot to be your friend,” Rodrigues said. “Don’t rely on those things to replace that connection you can get with someone that you can just meet face-to-face.”

Rodrigues said the piece takes inspiration from his past and his personality as a self-described “introverted kid.”

The two pieces are just a small portion of the larger collection, which also features works from: Gemma Cairney; Margaret Yao; Gigi Yang; Samantha Chen; Brendan Russell; Rhyanne Dela Cruz; Grant Malcolm; Riley Palmer; Mateo Mason; David Gao; Nola Sinclair; Thomas Headrick; Caron Deis; Fanting Zheng; and Mengyun Li.

The show’s high-profile venue also helps the students with future career prospects.

Kailee Fawcett is the exhibition and digital coordinator for ARTSCO and a former UBCO alumnus. Relating to her own experiences, she said that through public shows like Digital Fragments, she was able to make connections with ARTSCO and get a job in the arts industry.

“It’s been a really wonderful opportunity coming out of school to be able to have work within Kelowna that’s in the arts realm,” she said.

Fawcett said her path is one future students can follow.

“It really is about making those connections and being willing to talk to people,” she said. “Having exhibition opportunities like (Digital Fragments) allows their work to be seen in a public-facing area where people can connect with it.”

Dulic is thankful her students get to use the Kelowna Community Theatre as a venue.

“It is so important for students to have a venue, a real community venue,” Dulic said. “It’s not for the class anymore, it’s for themselves and being part of the community.”

For Rodrigues, Digital Fragments was his first public show. He said that, after getting over some initial nerves, he plans to take full advantage of the partnership.

Dulic and Myroniuk also expressed that one ambition of theirs would be to showcase Dance of the Moon Jellyfish in the Vancouver Aquarium.

The media studies students said artists should “just go for it” and show their work to the public without fear.

“It’s kind of intimidating at first, but just make your work your own and feel really confident in that, and that, at the end of the day, it will be okay, and people will love it.”

Digital Fragments was previously shown from Dec. 8 to 11. It will return at the beginning of January with an expanded lineup of artwork.