Month: October 2019

As I was researching through the speakers for the eye of festival 2019, artist Refik Anadol capture most of my attention. He is a media artist from Istanbul, Turkey but currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. He holds a master of fine arts degree from the University of California, Los Angeles in Media arts master of fine arts degree from Istanbul Bilgi University in Visual Communication Design as well as bachelors of arts degree with summa cum laude in Photography and Video.  He is working in the fields of site-specific public art with an approach of parametric data sculpture and live audio/visual performances. He is famous for his immersive installation approach and he particularly explores space among digital and physical entities by creating a hybrid relationship between architecture and media arts with machine intelligence. 

Refik Anadol is intrigued by the transformation of the subject of contemporary culture requires rethinking of the new aesthetic, technique and dynamic perception of space. Anadol builds his works on the nomadic subject’s reaction to and interactions with unconventional spatial orientations with data and machine intelligence. Embedding media arts into architecture, he questions the possibility of a post digital architectural future in which there are no more non-digital realities. He invites his audience to visualize alternative realities by presenting them the possibility of re-defining the functionalities of both interior and exterior architectural forms.. Anadol’s work suggests that all spaces and facades have potentials to be utilized as the media artists’ canvases. I was super inspired by this artist because of his usage of space and technology and how it creates just a vast atmosphere and incorporates nature and digital and media art altogether so successfully.

Jenny Sabin’s “PolyMorph” // 2013

As I was looking through previous Looking Outwards responses, I was very intrigued with Ilona’s post about Sabin’s work because, in my own scope of work, I am very interested in the interaction between the natural and the digital, and “PolyMorph” caught my eye as it perfectly sits in that spot. I totally agree with Ilona when she said that this project – although the structure mimics natural forms– it could not have been created without the use of technology, but it also could not have been created without the use of the human hands that cast, fire, and glaze the ceramic pieces joined with the robot arms in her lab studio that were used for 3D printing.

What I love about this project is how intricate it is: the structure is made up of 1400 pieces with 1300 different connection combinations and then built into a geometric structure that simulates geometry in nature. I personally love the intertwining of organic designs with technology and digital fabrication. Sabin uses her knowledge in architecture, design, biology, and mathematics to design material structures that are made of traditional art mediums as well as digital art mediums.

The artist that I chose to focus on this week is Meow Wolf, which is an artist collective, not just a singular artist. With over 400 employees with skills in a variety of media, Meow Wolf is known for creating immersive and interactive artistic experiences. I have heard of their work before in other classes, but had never done much research into what the collective actually is. I was intrigued to choose them for this assignment because the work that they do is what I hope to do in my design career and they are an organization that I would dream to work for.

The talk from Eyeo 2019 features two collaborators of Meow Wolf that have been working with the collective from the early days. I appreciate the talk because it’s not just about what they made, but how and why they make it. Their message is really about informing the audience about how a collective exists and operates. It was really interesting to learn about the way that the group progressed through the difficulty of establishing themselves as a productive artist group. I think a strong aspect of their presentation was including progress videos showing how the work and team was structured. It’s a fun and informative way to have more visuals than just photos and diagrams.

The group is known mainly for their project the House of Eternal Return, which is a large immersive experience in Sante Fe. The space that they occupy was bought for them by George R.R. Martin, and he then leased it to them to begin the installation. The visitor enters the space and the experience begins on the lawn of a Victorian house. The house looks normal, until the audience begins to explore and finds portals into other worlds. The artists wanted to create a space where the multiverse is present, somewhere where different dimensions are crashing into each other. Meow Wolf is beginning the process to install these spaces in other cities.

I think that Meow Wolf is an amazing group that is doing extraordinary work that I would very much want to be a part of. I chose to focus on them because their artistic interests really align with me own, and I think the talk they gave spoke a lot to the strides they have made to create a supportive and productive artist collective.