Aline de Souza is an artist-scholar whose work brings together the arts, creative technologies, and social sciences. She holds an interdisciplinary Ph.D., a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Technologies, and a Master of Landscape Architecture from Virginia Tech. She currently works as a Live Productions Assistant at the Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech and is the owner of Aline de Souza Art.
Her artistic practice explores music and visual arts as complementary forms of storytelling. She creates watercolor paintings and performs on the harp, bringing these disciplines together through technology-enhanced performances that combine music, visual art, and immersive media.
During her Ph.D., Aline conducted arts-based research at the intersection of the arts, architectural theory, and the humanities. She collaborated with Brandon Hale, Nia Perez-Vera, and Chynna Golding on an Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology (ICAT) funded project to create Stories of Migration, a multimedia performance sharing the experiences of people who migrated to Blacksburg, Virginia. Through harp and computer music, spatialized sound, floor-projected video art, and dance, the performance explored how interdisciplinary artistic experiences can foster empathy and encourage social change.
Originally from Brazil, Aline has Indigenous roots in the Amazon and has lived in Blacksburg, Virginia, since 2014. She has developed a deep sense of belonging within the New River Valley, an experience that has informed much of her artistic research. During her doctoral studies, she developed the concept of the autoethnography of disconnection, examining migration, identity, and belonging through artistic practice. In collaboration with Brandon Hale on music composition and audio technology, she created the performance Dogs and Immigration, an autobiographical work reflecting on her family of origin, social violence in Brazil, immigration, and the treatment of dogs. Combining narration, watercolor paintings, body movement, wires, screws, metal plates, facial X-rays, and immersive sound, the performance conveyed her personal migration story through an interdisciplinary artistic language.