Announcing the Fall 2024 Winners of the Coha-Gunderson Prize in Speculative Futures
The Humanities Institute is excited to announce the Fall 2024 winners and honorable mention of the Coha-Gunderson Prize in Speculative Futures. This competition celebrates mixed media work in speculative fiction from students across campus. It was established by THI’s Speculatively Scientific Fictions of the Future project and made possible by alumni Peter Coha (Kresge ’78, Mathematics) and James Gunderson (Rachel Carson ’77, Philosophy, and UCSC Foundation Board Trustee).
This year’s prizewinners have a wide variety of backgrounds, from art to computational media, as well as writing and film and digital media. Winners will be able to fully develop their projects through expert faculty guidance and by presenting their work at an exhibition in June 2025.
The selection committee awarded four graduate student project winners, one undergraduate student winner, and one honorable mention.
Graduate Student Winners
Chaelim Lim (Environmental Art and Social Practice) “Meeting Squids with Affection: Night Lights from Squid Ghosts.” Lim’s project is a set of activities starting with the question, “Have you ever heard of the squid ghosts”? Each activity (roundtables and workshops, etc) is structured around actors such as “light,” “squid,” and “ghosts”. Understanding the relationships between these actors will lead to a collective, material discussion about how to coexist with non-human beings that have different life cycles, mainly represented by squids. Following this set of activities, it becomes clear that the relationship between squid and light has been utilized to make squids ‘killable.’

Hans Kuzmich (Film and Digital Media) “Three Transmissions from a Carceral State II.” Kuzmich’s project is a creative piece of sonic fiction that tunes its ear to the abandoned radio frequencies of a former prison to reveal an unknown life form actively grappling with the site’s violent legacy. The work is set in the future after the complete abolition of all carceral institutions in the US. Its conceit revolves around an accidental discovery of audio recordings documenting the prison’s closure through radio communication among its staff, and the airwaves’ eventual repopulation by an unknown force that conjures sonic specters of the prison’s past, present, and future. The piece takes the form of live performance, radio broadcast, and sound installation with the participation of abolitionist artist-organizers.

Hongwei (Henry) Zhou (Computational Media) “Sea of Paint.” Zhou’s project is a narrative-driven speculative game that reflects on data-driven AI technologies through magical realist and supernatural motifs. It takes place as a dialogue between the player and a conjured “spirit” through data-driven technologies, while the player gets to search the memories of the spirit through a text-to-image interface. It explores a theme commonly addressed in sci-fi stories—the boundaries of humanness—through the questions of memory and remembering. How is our understanding of humanness challenged by the encroaching datafication of memory and the machinic intervention in remembering? Additionally, the game proposes a posthumanist perspective on humanness as a property of relations so as to connect to more sociological concerns of AI, such as labor exploitation.

Tyler Rai (Art) “Shoresh: Speculative Imaginaries of Seeds in Exile.” Rai’s project is a mixed-media installation and social engagement project that fosters creative collaboration between students, faculty, and a public in partnership with Vivien Sansour and the Palestinian Heirloom Seed Library (PHSL). PHSL seeks to preserve and promote heritage and threatened seed varieties, traditional Palestinian farming practices, and the cultural stories and identities associated with them. Growing heritage seeds is an intervention in the current context of cultural and ecological devastation. It is an intervention that enacts worldings rooted in sanctuary, adaptation, and solidarity; and that stewards crafted imaginings of survival, thriving, and return. Through the installation, visitors are invited to speculate on the future of the heritage seeds that will be grown at Pie Ranch and the UCSC Farm.

Undergraduate Student Winners
Hannah Barrett (Literature/Creative Writing) “The Delivery.” Barrett’s project is the opening piece in a collection of science-fiction short stories. “The Delivery” tells the story of Rowan, a deliveryman in the technologically advanced city of Baloor. When a package takes him to an unfamiliar town beyond the city perimeters, Rowan discovers the importance of his intervention in a job that could have been otherwise completed by droids. The story explores the dynamic between humans and their creations, asking readers why it is important to retain our humanity in an ever-growing world of technological advancements. It also maintains that critical thinking will always be vital in the face of programming that can think and perform beyond us.

Honorable Mention
Emily Tran (Performance, Play, and Design) “Story of Vices: Amelia and the Wisps.” Tran’s project, “Amelia and the Wisps” is a speculative graphic narrative that explores mental health through a magical realist lens, where emotional struggles manifest as visible entities—familiars—seen only by those who bear them. The prologue, “How it All Began,” introduces Amelia, a people pleaser navigating her overthinking and anxiety, represented by ethereal, snake-like wisps. This project reimagines mental health as something to coexist with rather than overcome, using warm pastels and a cartoon art style to create an accessible yet deeply personal story. It forms the first chapter of The Story of Vices, a larger narrative examining varied mental health experiences through striking visual metaphors.

The winners of the Coha-Gunderson Prize in Speculative Futures will have the opportunity to further develop their submissions with members of the Speculatively Scientific Fictions of the Future project through The Coha-Gunderson Creativity Workshop and present their work at an exhibition in the Spring. We look forward to sharing more about these creative pieces!
Banner image comes from Chaelim Lim’s project.