Studying at Columbia University and Parsons School of Design, and working at places like Google and New York University, Jane Freidhoff is an interdisciplinary artist who primarily makes small-scale video games. These games tend to explore power fantasies, specifically for marginalized groups who have historically (and even now) find disempowered in comparison to the archetypical straight white man. While violence, crime, and outrage are used to punctuate this power grab, the overall aesthetics of Freidhoff’s games are far less dark and intense. That is to say, the intensity within her games are usually found in the bright color palettes and oversaturated imagery, an aesthetic that I was immediately drawn to. This immediate juxtaposition is already quite funny, but that is not where Freidhoff’s sense of humor ends. Whether in scenarios (girls destroying a mall via car), game control (screaming to shoot a gun), or display (being able to win numbers so large that scientific notation is required), Freidhoff brings absurdity and fun to a need for power. That being said, there is a real layer of anger that sits beneath the surface of her work. Heavily inspired by Riot Grrrl, Freidhoff touches greatly on female rage, in addition to her struggles related to her queer and Jewish identities. I think I’m most drawn to Freidhoff’s aesthetics, sense of humor, and ability to tackle issues that I similarly face. The casual, funny, and relatable way she speaks about her work is also appealing to me.
Joanie Lemercier is a French artist based in Brussels and principal of studio Joanie Lemercier. None of his profiles online list any institution of education. He desribes himself as a visual artist operating on the mantra: “light as a medium, space as a canvas”, with an interest in playing with light, geometry and human perception to capture the ‘sublime’.
In 2007, he and several other friends started a collective ‘visual label’ called AntiVJ. Until he parted ways with them in 2013 to start his own practice, his body of work consisted of temporary (and then eventually permanent) museum and gallery installations, architectural projections on and inside monuments aroudn the world, live music events and festivals (eg. Mutek) alongside artists such as Flying Lotus and Adrian Utley.
FUJI (不死）(2014)
One major impression the video left on me was how much of Lemercier’s thought process paralleled mine. From the fascination with light and geometry, to our reliance on visual perception, to the ‘sublimity’ of nature, I felt that Lemercier was describing the motivations I was feeling in words even better than I would have. In particular, when he talked about staring into the mountains and feeling this weird indescribable feeling, I remembered how when I lived in Hong Kong, whether it was during the day, or at sunset, or at 2am at night, when I felt restless, I would go to the harbour and stare out at the sea and just get lost in the waves. At the time, my main creative outlet was dance – and similar to how the mountains and topographical patterns influence Lemercier’s work – flow, layers, waves, compression and release inspired by the movement of the sea found themselves in my dance. Another thing I admired the intensity with which he approaches his work – He describes a period of his time at AntiVJ as ‘living inside the computer’ and even ends his talk but reaffirming his desire to continue chasing the representation of the ‘sublime’. I’ve come to realise I also have a tendency to hyperfixate on my passion projects. For instance, I’ve been increasingly interested in filmography and video editing, and every time I start a new project, I am unable to think about or focus on something else for at least 1-2 days. Hearing his words and seeing his body of work felt affirming, almost like he was saying: “This is how I interpreted my feelings [of the sublime] and how they informed my work. .. [If I can do it, so can you]”.
Constellations (2018)
When presenting his work, he kept it simple and light, starting with a introduction of where he had gone and the relevant concept (ie. pantheism/ the sublime), moving onto a brief overview of the project (ie. where + when it was) and wrapping it up with 1 – 2 sentences offering an insight from behind the scenes. Because his work with projection is interactive and time based, when presenting his work, he included numerous videos or gifs of the places he visited and the at pieces in motion, and you were able to easily keep up and understand what he was talking about. For instance, I found it difficult to connect when he was describing the FUJI installation purely through words and still images. However, once he showed the video of the installation in motion, his process and his motivations became clear. The seeming effortlessness with which he was able to communicate the large breadth of his work, in my opinion, was facilitated by how directly he correlated his inspirations and his ideas to the resultant projects and will definitely be something I keep in mind in future projects.
Alexander Chen works at Google Creative Lab exploring his interest in visualizing and augmenting audio and music from human interaction. His goal is to not only discover different ways music works but to also create playful programs that question what can make music: in his opinion, anything, from instruments to subways maps. In his presentation for Eyeo (2017), he displays various projects he created that all create sound differently; some respond to voice input and match it to a song pattern, and another visualized temporal lag in music. The one I found most interesting was one program that, linked to a mini keyboard, would display the colored dots with different transparencies and placements that represented the keys and the intensity of key press or volume. Beyond hearing the music, this program allowed people to see the music almost as a story with notes as strings of characters that interact in a complex dance; as the music gets more complex the characters multiply and move faster but in a pattern clear to those listening. This visualization also helps people hear the music better as they can see which sounds are made of multiple notes and where these notes are placed relative to each other. Another program I found very interesting is called Spectrogram, which is on his website, Chrome Music Lab, (which he designed as a playground of audio). Most programs he places on this website lack labels and encourages children to discover and explore how the audio in each program is manipulated. I think his work allows people of all ages to learn not only how sounds work but to think of it in different, unconventional ways.
Kawandeep Virdee is the co-founder of New American Public Art, an organization that strives to create interactive art, “art that sees you,” in public spaces, so there’s never a paywall for the artwork. He places meaning-making and joy, especially that which is created in community or with other people, at the forefront of his practice. He does this not only by making his interactive art pieces customizable to the audience but also by being aware of the site or public setting which allows conversation to be made between audience members because, as he says in the video, you can always create more meaning with others than with oneself. I really admire his ability to do this through complete customizability, like in PDX I Love You where people create heart cutouts of anything (photos, maps, graphics, etc.) they like on Valentine’s day, because it allows an entire range and freedom within that range of meaning-making depending on whatever the audience member wants. His accountability of both accessibility and customizability perfectly accomplishes his goal as it creates genuine meaning-making in the face of certain obstacles, like the consumerism and societal expectations that usually engulf valentine’s day is countered by PDX I Love You’s way of creating meaning. The cool thing is that his work really ranges in the type of interaction as PDX was about sharing and love but he has spherical sculptures about the interaction of movement that’s simply fun for kids to play with and data-collecting visualizations of some kind of input that the audience can execute in real-time. He succeeds in the community effect he attempts to achieve by displaying his work in large public settings or a server that is being updated live so people can see their inputs simultaneously manifest with others. I thoroughly admire his placing of visual execution fully on the audience because it promotes artistic diversity, freedom, community, and spontaneity, which are some of the paramount reasons I am an artist myself. Thus, I see those aspects of presentation as very educational to my practice.
Christina “Phazero” Curlee is an anti-disciplinary game designer and artist specializing in conveying narratives through interactive environment and level design. They are a MFA candidate specializing in Game Design at the University of Los Angeles and possess a BFA in Digital Art from UT Austin. Currently based in Los Angeles, Christina’s passion for game creation originated from their background in fine arts; initially intending to create interactive installations but finding little success, they began shifting their practice to 3D arts and programming. Christina’s presentation at the EYEO Festival was, in short, eloquent and personable; according to them, what most attracted them to utilizing video games as an artistic medium is the element of play – through interactive, abstract environments and video media capable of evoking multiple sensory responses, they are able to effectively convey narratives that confront challenging topics in a non-explicit manner, taking the player through surreal yet personal experiences in the process. That’s also what I admire most about Christina’s work; not only are they visually captivating and fun to play, they are also narratively rich and artistically confrontational.
Manuel Lima is a Portuguese-American designer and author who is known for transforming informational data into various elegant and beautiful forms of art. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Industrial Design at the Technical University of Lisbon and received his Master of Fine Arts Degree in Design and Technology from the Parsons School of Design in New York City.
Lima’s website, Visual Complexity, illustrates his vast portfolio of detailed and intricate artwork, which I find very appealing to the eye. His work often uses a lot of curves and lines, which is made up of many different colors. Yet, each piece of art represents some different form of data. For example, his piece “Marvel Uberframework” (see below) represents the correlation of different Marvel characters, such as Spiderman and Captain America.
However, his most well-known and complex artwork can be found in his literary work, “The Book of Circles: Visualizing Spheres of Knowledge”. As mentioned in his 2017 lecture, Lima shows various artwork pieces represented in many circular forms that comes from any form of data, ranging from ancient to contemporary times. I love how in his lecture, Lima mentions the bridge of knowledge from thousands of years ago to the present, which keeps our well-established society going. He also emphasizes the importance of creating new artwork using data, that can be passed down to future generations.
Nicole Aptekar is a digital artist based in Brooklyn, New York, who creates paper-sculptures, provoking deep questions about the world around us. Aptekar studied at NYU ITP, and has always strived to build a artistic-technical relationship with audiences, through mediums: musical synthesizers, painting, animation, digital art.
Aptekar’s work mainly depicts her dark anxiety/fear in a fictional landscape, complete with strong shadows, curves, and a black and white color palatte. After each piece is finished, she writes the moment the art represents- and an excerpt becomes the title. (Seen below)
I watch enraptured by the gaze of the mountains.
I also appreciate Aptekar’s acknowledgement of the creative process, and her expression of the hardships she faced along the way. From creating a fire- touch sensitive version of popular arcade game “Dance Dance Revolution” (see below), to a “LED lit, fire breathing, collaborative music sequencing, cube tornado!”, she has experimented with a lot to get where she is today.
Mother Cyborg, AKA, Diana Nucera, is an artist, educator and community organizer. She is heavily active in the Detroit Area, and looks to develop technology meant to impact communities that are being left behind in the digital age. In her lecture at Eyeo, she showed data about Detroit residences access to broadband, and how that correlates to people impacted by poverty. She co-founded the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition (DDJC) that works in the Detroit area to make sure that everyone has equal access to technology and media. They also share the tools to do this freely with the public, and organize communities together to generate solutions within the digital landscape. In 2014, she founded the Detroit Community Technology Project (DCTP). Through this program, she has expanded community technology in Detroit through the Equitable Internet Initiative.
Through her Mother Cyborg alter-ego, she has developed music and art that discusses where technology intersects social spaces and relationships. She was a Kresge Literary Arts Fellow in 2019. She recieved her Bachelor of Fine Arts in New Media at San Francisco Art Institute, and her Masters of Fine Arts from the School of the Arts Institute in Chicago. She is now looking into AI and how that with music can advance community digital justice issues.
A body of work of hers that I admire is from her Pressure Systems album from 2017. Her first track, 3souled Women, has a very interesting electronic beat that is catchy and very dance worthy. But what I really like is her lyrics. She talks about a cyborg women’s body and how it experiences pain, but can’t verbalize what it is. It is very other worldly and so very different from music I usually listen to. I enjoyed the whole album, but I do really like the first track.
From her justice initiatives, I really liked the Beat Match Brunch initiative. In her Mother Cyborg persona, she taught women and gender non conforming individuals how to play and scratch records to make their own beats. Her hope is to diversify Detroit’s music scene and creating a network for these musicians to grow into and with. Being a female musician myself, I really resonated with this idea and story.
Diana presented her work by using interesting visuals in a powerpoint presentation that complimented or augmented her speaking. She also connected with her audience by asking for a reaction to her ideas or issues. She had a good and clear tone of her voice to present, and she was very likable. At the end of her presentation, she sang a song that she sings at the beginning of every show she does. The song is her way of cleansing the palate and opening up the soul to evoke empathy and receive a story. By singing that song at the end, she was really connecting with her audience and providing them an experience that is similar to if they saw her perform a show live. I can use all these techniques, except the singing, to use when I present my own work.
For this week’s Looking Outwards post I want to introduce video game designer, artist, professor, and writer Lindsay Grace. He is best known as an academic game designer who employs critical design. He currently is a professor at the University of Miami. The part I admire most about Lindsay is his creative use of interactive media and games to explore cultural standards. He is able to design games that are purpose-driven, that includes games that focus on education, social phenomenon, news, etc. A strategy he uses is using cute/simple graphics to represent serious topics like mental health issues, slavery, and environmental waste. He describes this great contrast in his video games as “reminding us the tension in the things we enjoy.” I think this is really effective because every time when we learn about serious subjects we always set the tone to be stern and serious and that would lose the users’ interest easily. On the other hand, if we approach it in a more casual and lighthearted way, it wouldn’t necessarily make the users forget the seriousness of the subject matter but better educate them by having their attention first.
This is the set of games Lindsay mentioned in his lecture.
Sands fish is an Experience Designer that integrates technology to design services, interfaces, and experiences. He has previously worked with Nike to design an interactive game installation names the Joyride Experience along with MIT’s “Space Exploration Initiative”, working with NASA astronauts to design a musical instrument made to work in zero-gravity environments. Sands uses quotes, storytelling, and many visuals, other’s work that he admires, and transitions smoothly from one topic to another to present his work. Sands discusses a Futures thinking approach of thinking beyond the present and instead contemplating the possible, potential, and probable. A large emphasis of his lecture is discussing speculative design which is the idea of thinking beyond the systems, objects, etc. that already exist and asking questions. Sand’s presentation style is very effective and engaging due to the many visuals and examples he incorporated within his lecture. Since I want to be an Industrial designer, the concepts he raised and provoking design exercises, especially within the future of police are very intriguing to me and got me to think about design from a different approach.
This is one of the projects Sands discussed during his lecture. It is a speculative design concept probing the question “What if citizens designed the police?”
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