Animation is most often viewed on a screen. But when animators break traditional rules and abandon the “almighty rectangle,” Christine Banna says artistic magic can happen.
Banna, assistant professor in RIT’s School of Film and Animation, encourages her students to explore experimental animation techniques. Recently, Banna and two students leaned into this outside-the-box approach to the craft for “The Hundred Windows,” a choral performance curated in collaboration with the Mount Hope World Singers and Composer and Sound Designer Logan Barrett.
“Opening students’ eyes to a more experimental way of working—showing them how to break the rules they’ve learned—is enriching. They can discover more about the creative process,” said Banna. “Most filmmaking is product-driven and focused on that final export of the film. But with experimental work, sometimes the product is an afterthought and the process itself is the real artwork.”
“The Hundred Windows” is an immersive, multidisciplinary exploration of the senses featuring 12 choral works from around the globe, a quadraphonic electronic soundscape, and projected animations. Both the soundscape and animated projections are live-mixed, making each performance unique.
Jackie McGriff
From left, Katelyn Park ’25, Christine Banna, and Bathschèba Duronvil pose for a photo on the stage set for “The Hundred Windows.”
The show premiered in June 2025 and was performed at RIT twice this month. The next performance is on Sept. 15 as part of the ESL Rochester Fringe Festival.
Banna was the lead projection designer, animator, and VJ for the show. Bathschèba Duronvil, a third-year film and animation graduate student, and Katelyn Park ’25 (film and animation) worked as Banna’s assistant projection design interns.
Their goal was to create an immersive, sensory-rich experience that paralleled the emotional arc of the music and reinforced the symbolic sensory experiences embodied by each song. Each animation was handcrafted using watercolor and collage techniques that were digitally manipulated to introduce “glitching” throughout the course of the concert.
Duronvil and Park helped Banna determine what colors, shapes, and visual movement would best reflect each song, and assisted with creating the physical and digital animation assets. During the performances, they helped Banna with live mixing, guiding her based on written and improvisational musical cues.
As Duronvil looks toward crafting their senior thesis film this year—for which they aim to collaborate with Ghanaian artists and musicians—working on “The Hundred Windows” offered insight on how to nurture a respectful, collaborative environment.
“I have never worked with such a well-established singing group before, but my fear quickly dissipated when I reminded myself that an internship is all about learning new skills,” said Duronvil, from Portland, Ore. “I’ve learned a lot of valuable lessons through this internship and just by watching Christine as a professor.”
Christine Banna
Katelyn Park, left, and Bathschèba Duronvil, right, sit in Christine Banna’s studio, using custom gear to digitally alter the watercolor animations created for the show.
Park said she was delighted to work alongside one of her mentors, who she met during her first year at RIT, on this project.
“Christine has shown me that some of the most wonderful, spontaneous, and creatively liberating ideas come from chaos—from embracing the things we’re most scared of and taking that leap of faith. I saw this project as a wonderful opportunity to continue to learn from how she brings her experimental practices to collaborative projects,” said Park.
She added that this project was also an opportunity to take her learning off campus. Engaging with the local artistic community was an inspiring reminder of the power that art can hold.
“This has shown me that it’s possible to create the kind of art I feel most fulfilled creating in a way that deeply and directly touches the community around me,” she said. “To see these artists practicing their craft so passionately just a bus ride away from my house made me feel more connected to Rochester than I’ve ever been.”
Annika Bentley, artistic director of the Mount Hope World Singers and creative director of “The Hundred Windows,” said the show is inspired by the umwelt, a term coined by biologist Jakob von Uexküll, and An Immense World, a non-fiction work by Ed Yong that examines animal senses.
An umwelt is the specific way in which organisms of a particular species perceive and experience the world, shaped by the capabilities of their sensory organs and perceptual systems. Bentley said pairing this term with the themes from Yong’s book made for a fascinating exploration of how humans view each other and the world, and how those perceptions impact the way we interact and connect with others.
“The Hundred Windows” marks Bentley and Banna’s second collaboration, the first being for a performance titled Stories From the Living Tree.
“Christine and I are very sympathetic in our artistic attitude. I think that her work allows us to explore and expand on the songs in a more creatively free way,” she said. “It lets the audience access the larger ideas of the performance on a more profound level.”
Barrett echoed Bentley’s positive view on the collaboration.
“Annika’s artistic direction was both open-ended enough to inspire ideas, and specific enough to challenge me and push me to places I couldn’t have thought of otherwise,” he said. “Toward the end of our process, Christine and I were surprised to find that our individual methods lead us to very similar interpretations of the subject matter and the music.”
For more information and to get tickets to the upcoming performance, go to the Mount Hope World Singers website. Go to the School of Film and Animation webpage for more information about RIT’s animation programs.
See the concert
The next performance of “The Hundred Windows” is on Monday, Sept. 15, at 6 p.m. at the JCC Hart Theater as part of the ESL Rochester Fringe Festival. Get your tickets on the Mount Hope World Singers website.
