Kai Zhang-Looking Outwards-08

Chris Sugrue – How Real Do These Pixels Feel?

Chris Sugrue holds a Masters of Fine Arts in Design and Technology from Parsons School of Design. She has worked as a creative engineer at the Ars Electronica Futurelab where she was the lead developer for a stereoscopic interactive dance performance with artist and choreographer Klaus Obermaier. Sugrue was the recipient of a year-long fellowship at the Eyebeam Art and Technology Center in New York, and has held artist residencies with Hangar in Barcelona, La Casa De Velázquez in Madrid and Harvestworks in New York. 

Chris is an artist and programmer developing interactive installations, audio-visual performances and experimental interfaces. Her works experiment with technology in playful and curious ways and investigate topics such as artificial life, eye-tracking and optical illusions.

She presented a few of the works during the speech, most of which have one common ground that explores the vanishment of boundaries between virtual and reality. As an architect junior designer, I have the experience of dealing with the virtualization of objects within the digital space; however, it’s rarely the case when the digital represented works meet with the actual object in a mutual coexisting guesture. In Chris’s presentation, she has shown the power of how virtual imageries would have to interfere with the real sensatives. The most interesting project of hers is how human hands are scanned using cameras and projected on the screen with distorted fingers. I don’t even have to experience it in person to feel the distortion happening not only visually, but also psychologically with the person of the hand.

Also, what’s very inspiring about her works is how technology is involved. Most of the equipments are relatively simple to adopt and use. The codes are also not too complicated either. The focus of the works isn’t necessarily about the shwocase of tech but to achieve the minimal sense of technology involvement.

Sometimes “bugs” of the codes can even be a playful part of the experience. During her presentation of the work of the crawling bugs that travels from the screen to your body when you touch them, she describes how there’s an actual bug in the code that unable to retrieve the bugs that already off the screen. She talked about the kids tried to get the last bug from the screen. To me this is also another beautiful accident that adds to the spice of the whole experience.

What I enjoy about her way of presenting is that there’s a very immediate fascination from her storytelling that’s easy to understand and reflect. And her visual representations are also very clear and interpretable. The use of music and video clips works together in a synergy that delivers the exact experience as you’re right at the place.

Artist Website – http://csugrue.com/