Bridges 2026 Short Film Festival

Brian Carter, Shanna Dobson

Filmmakers

Brian Carter

Associate Professor, Film

ArtCenter College of Design

Pasadena, California, USA

bcmusik@mac.com

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Shanna Dobson

Assistant Professor of Mathematics

ArtCenter College of Design, H&S Department

Pasadena, CA

Shanna.Dobson@artcenter.edu

View exhibition history

Statement

What does it mean to think in structures that cannot be seen? A mathematician immersed in p-adic geometry and a musician composing in parallel confront the same problem: how to bring structure into form. In a space where equations gather on glass and extend into a larger, invisible architecture, mathematics becomes an interior landscape—at once isolating and expansive, felt as much as understood. As musical phrases from an original score unfold in time, mirroring the movement and development of thought, both move through persistence and fracture, arriving at a moment of resolution—not as conclusion, but as alignment within a larger structure—revealing mathematics and music as parallel acts of composition shaped by tension, structure, and release.

Films

Image for entry 'The Sound of Resolution'

The Sound of Resolution

00:03:05

Directors: Shanna Dobson & Brian Carter Cinematography: Brian Carter Original Score: Brian Carter Performer: Shanna Dobson

2025

This film was inspired by the experience of working in deep, abstract mathematics, where understanding often emerges slowly through isolation, repetition, and intuition. While studying p-adic geometry, I became interested in how mathematical thought is not only logical but embodied—shaped by movement, attention, and persistence over time. The film explores the relationship between mathematics and music as parallel processes of composition: both unfold through structure, tension, and resolution. The original score was developed in direct dialogue with the mathematical process, reflecting its rhythms and transformations. What makes the film unique is its focus on the human experience of mathematics—revealing its emotional depth, solitude, and moments of insight, and rendering abstract structures as lived, spatial, and temporal phenomena rather than purely symbolic ones.