Interviews taken throughout 2025; San Francisco Bay Area (UC Berkeley) / CalArts campus

Throughout the duration, six ~20-minute sections alternating between the two locations; each containing equivalent content. Four 15-minute ambient instrumentals are interspersed.

Documentation of individuals; a collective; certain places and times. Portraits of how these people felt at one particular instance. Portraits of a Zeitgeist; or perceptions constructed after the fact. A portrait of the interviewer unseen, a through line between each interview.

Skyler Lee Baysa is a composer and musician from the California Bay Area. He currently studies at CalArts, and holds a bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley with honors in Music and Linguistics. He has received an Honorable Mention from the Morton Gould Young Composer Award Competition, the David and Diana Menn Memorial Prize in Music, and was the winner of the Oriens Composition Competition 2024 for ages 18-25. Skyler was the youngest composer to be commissioned for Musaics of the Bay’s inaugural Stay-at-Home Symposium in July 2020. His compositions have been performed by various professional musicians in the San Francisco Bay Area, including Friction Quartet and players from the SF Symphony. He currently plays with Gamelan Sari Raras and Gamelan Burat Wangi, is a member of Halau Ka Ua Tuahine, and formerly played with the Berkeley Chinese Music Ensemble.

Skyler is interested in concepts such as juxtaposition, layering, textuality, obfuscation of meaning, anthropology, and human-centricity. He is inspired by the works of Cecelia Condit, Laurie Anderson, and Yma Sumac. In his free time, Skyler enjoys low-fi filmmaking and video editing, creating languages, and boba. Follow Skyler on Instagram at @skblobfisk

Thanks to the people who agreed to be filmed, interviewed, and have their interviews be used!

Skyler Lee Baysa @skblobfisk