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Center for Art Design and Visual Culture - UMBC
Video still from "Conflux: Variation" by Collis Donadio, showing a large grey-colored mound of minerals against a blue sky.
“Conflux: Variation” video still, 2025 Shannon Collis & Liz Donadio (Courtesy of the artists) Description of audio, authored by the artists: a deeply resonant audio landscape builds momentum, merging field recordings of industrial machinery, trains, water, and wind with digital and analog synthesis. Layered low-frequency tones shift between foreground and background, aligning with the visuals. The soundscape evokes the essence of the visited sites and the interplay of natural and industrial elements.

Conflux: Variation by Collis Donadio

May 21–June 25, 2025

Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture at UMBC (CADVC) launches its 2025 program with “Conflux: Variation” (2025) by Baltimore-region artist collective Collis Donadio.

This public video art projection explores the intersections of industry and the environment in Baltimore, where water meets land. Between 2023 and 2024, collaborating artists Shannon Collis and Liz Donadio recorded video and audio documentation in sites where industry has reshaped local habitats, such as the Curtis Bay Water Tower and Baltimore City’s marine terminals. The artists think of this documentary research and resulting installation as a “speculative exploration of the future, using moving images to convey transformation and transition.

From the Curtis Bay industrial area, with its water tower and terminal where coal is stockpiled for shipment, to Masonville Cove, a nearly 50-acre environmentally restored space and the site of the nation’s first Urban Wildlife Refuge Partnership, the artists visited sites repeatedly and in all seasons, seeking to explore how industry, environment, and community converge and influence one another. The resulting footage was initially presented in a multiscreen installation artwork at Baltimore’s Voxel art space in 2024.

The updated work, now titled “Conflux: Variation,” was adapted for the CADVC public video art projection series in the Fine Arts Building amphitheater. This installation is designed and mapped responsively to the building, with segments of the video reflecting and animating specific features of the built environment on which the work is presented.

“This project marks the first time we are presenting our work outdoors, using the physical architecture of a building as a screen,” the artists reflected. “The sky becomes our black box. We hope the audience will encounter the work as we first approached our sites: through spontaneous, layered interactions.”

Following the initiation of CADVC’s video art projection series in 2024, launched with experimental “demo” video presentations by artist Levester Williams, “Conflux: Variation” marks the first exhibition-length presentation of an artwork designed in response to the architecture of the building.

“Conflux: Variation” will be on view nightly from sundown until 2 am between February 14 and June 30, 2025. CADVC will host a public talk featuring Shannon Collis and Liz Donadio on March 4 at 6 pm.

All CADVC programs are free and open to the public. If you need any specific accommodation to experience a CADVC exhibition or program, whether online or in person, please contact cadvc@umbc.edu or 410-455-3188 as soon as possible.

“We learned about the architectural investigations of Collis Donadio as part of our public art planning research, sponsored by the Maryland State Arts Council, in early 2023. Over a year later, we have built a spectacular infrastructure for public video art presentation. I’m thrilled to see the work of Collis Donadio presented in this series—they have been with us from the outset of this endeavor.”

Rebecca Uchill, CADVC Director and project curator

Shannon Collis and Liz Donadio in front of an audience discussing their work, "Conflux: Variation." A still of the work is projected behind them.
Photo by Tedd Henn
A group of individuals are both seated and standing while looking up at a projection. There are both children and adults in the group
Photo by Tedd Henn
A group looks up at a video projection on the side of a red brick building.
Photo by Tedd Henn

Related Events

Two women stand in front of a flowering bush staring at the camera. The woman at the left has long dirty blonde hair with a black t-shirt while the woman at right has short brown hair and is wearing a grey blouse.
Shannon Collis and Liz Donadio. Photo by Jill Fannon

Visitor Information

Our exhibitions and events are free and open to the public for full participation by all individuals regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, or any other protected category under applicable federal law, state law, and the University’s nondiscrimination policy.

If you need specific accommodations at one of our events, whether in person or online, or to experience an exhibition, please contact CADVC at cadvc@umbc.edu or 410-455-3188 as soon as possible.