Fall 2025
By Hongtao Hu

Computer science at Rice isn’t merely a science of computers. It’s also an art. Just ask 2025 graduate Lavender Juma, whose college journey has taken her from a neo-“byte” programmer to an engineer at Amazon Web Services. Juma also gained interdisciplinary experience through her work at the Moody Center for the Arts.

Initially rejected from the Moody her freshman year, Juma got a call in 2022: The center found her programming skills a perfect fit for “Metaphysical Reclamations,” a project by digital artist Mary Flanagan exploring artificial intelligence and the Anthropocene.

Using text-to-image models VQGAN and CLIP, Juma generated sprawling cityscapes from text prompts. The process was iterative — tweaking prompts, inspecting results and sharing stirring images for Flanagan to render in oil and ochre.

The first few batches were blurry and nonsensical, but Juma wasn’t discouraged. Working with computer science professor Vicente Ordóñez-Román, who developed tools to access Google cologs, Juma eventually created compelling images that Flanagan painted.

The final exhibition speculated utopian visions of sustainability: rooted buildings shimmered with glass and foliage, combining trees and human-made architecture.

When she started, Juma was a sophomore with limited AI experience — but ambition and a willingness to learn was enough.

“[Flanagan and I] were like, we’ll learn together, and we did learn together,” Juma said. “I learned from the experience that you don’t have to know everything about AI. … All I needed to do was read code and understand code.

“I’m not really talented when it comes to art, but to see the fact that I can use something that I have knowledge about — technology — and produce art with it was interesting,” Juma continued. “I think that was one of the best projects that I worked with at Rice.”

The project sparked introspection.

“When I was taking my class, I was basically following this booklet,” Juma said. “[The project] shaped me. … I was able to sit back and say, ‘What exactly am I interested in?’”

This project wasn’t just a fluke in Juma’s academic journey. Her passion for art and technology continues in another exhibition with the Moody’s newest installation in the Ralph S. O’Connor Building.

In “Climate Parliament” by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, a movement-activated passageway plays recordings of prominent voices on climate change, reminiscent of the sound of crashing waves on a seashore. Juma is currently at work on a website for the piece.