Kate Armstrong is a Vancouver-based writer, exhibitionist, and artist. She has over 15 years of experience with focusing on the broader intersection of technology and art. Throughout her life, she has produced numerous exhibitions in Canada and internationally, created many works of art, and even wrote a few books on how technology and art intersect.
Today, we’ll take a look at one of Armstrong’s lesser-known works: Space Video.
Released back in 2012, Space Video is a 3-minute generative system that addresses ideas of exploration in relation to inner and outer space. It has a computer-generated algorithm that combines different snapshots of YouTube videos with various electronic sounds and synths. The video is meant to portray non-visual spaces in outer space. It is a mixture of space exploration, hypnosis, guided meditation, and science fiction, which is very trippy to the human eye.
Angela Washko’s The Game: The Game is a feminist computational video game that explores the politics and tactics of the pick-up “artist” through the form of a dating simulator. As the player, you encounter several major “seduction coaches” who attempt to woo you through an array of techniques and practices taken from their instructional material – which range from cheesy and uncomfortable to out-right violent. In creating The Game: The Game, Washko essentially allows the player to understand and, in turn, expose and defuse the manipulative and disturbing practices of these pick-up artists. That’s also what I admire most about it; on the surface, it’s a strange, funny, and disorienting game; dig a little deeper, however, you’ll have a nuanced view of the social implications and power dynamics in the world of contemporary sex.
An associate professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon University, Angela Washko is a politically-active media artist working in a variety of mediums – namely, film, virtual environments, and interactive video games – with the aim of conveying unconventional stories from unusual perspectives in media. I’ve personally attended one of Washko’s lectures and, needless to say, I’m elated to have the opportunity to write about them.
The project that I admire is Andrea Polli’s “Garrison Canal” light artwork that is in Downtown Pittsburgh. I have seen this work of hers in person, and it is very famous in Pittsburgh due to its beauty at night which makes it very instagram-able. What I did not know about his project was that it is a weather responsive light artwork. The light turns the alleyway into an imaginary underwater future world of big data. The lights transform color and are animated in response to real time changes in local weather conditions from a weather station in Downtown Pittsburgh.
Andrea had previously done another project called “Energy Flow” on the Rachel Carson bridge and wanted to create another artwork that was similar. The project is meant to liven Pittsburgh’s alleyways with artwork, lighting and other interactive elements. I really liked the simplicity of this project and how beautiful it ends up being at dark. It really makes a dark and scary alleyway more inviting and beautiful to the average pedestrian.
Andrea Polli is an environmental artist that uses art, science, and technology in her works. Her work includes media installations, public artwork, community projects, performances, publications, and public exhibitions/events. Her artwork looks to raise awareness of environmental issues. She studied at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago for her MFA in Time Arts, and she has a PhD in practice-led research from the University of Plymouth in England. She is currently a professor at the University of New Mexico. She has also worked at Columbia College Chicago, Robert Morris College, and Hunter College of CUNY. She has co-edited a book, “Far Field: Digital Culture, Climate Change and the Poles”. She has also authored “Hack the Grid” published by the Carneige Museum of Art. She has public work all over the world, including Pittsburgh, Utah, North Carolina, Germany, and Croatia.
Garrison Canal public light artwork by Andrea Polli in Downtown Pittsburgh (2019).
Rezaire is a socially-conscious and anti-colonialist artist working in moving image and performative, experimental art. She attained a master’s degree from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design for her art practice and can be seen today composing thought-provoking performance pieces, jarring videos, and visceral net design. You need not look further than her website (https://www.tabitarezaire.com/offering) to get a strong idea of what she does. I admire her work because it has this absurdity in aesthetics (reminds be of Jacolby Satterwhite’s work) through purposely messy, dated graphic and net design mixed with straight-forward, but just as weird, language like “anti capitalist bae chasing the money,” “colorism kills,” and “pimp your brain” in her self portrait series INNER FIRE. This aesthetic culminates in a maximalist, sensory overload that forces the audience to at least interact with something that is present in her work. By doing so, audiences need to think about the countless junctures of social commentary Rezaire is expressing about. From beauty standards to the intra-capitalist rebellion necessary for marginalized groups in the hypercapitalist US state to the other-worldly, outer-space motifs that assert a futurism as a form of anti-colonialist rebellion (reminds me of similar aesthetic utilizations by music artist Sun Ra in his imagining of other worlds when colonialist oppression very apparently and concretely has taken that of black, brown, and Asian countries all around the world), her mission is both clear and effectively communicated through the clear desire of confrontation of the audience.
As a pioneer in 3D animation and VR/AR simulation, Claudia focuses on adapting virtual simulations to historical subjects. She studied art and architectural history at NYU and Columbia University and now works in New York. Being a feminist artist, her work has huge historical references where she subverts canonical male rulers into something more fantastical with digital technology.
Claudia’s multi-media exhibition, The Dolls House
As a student majoring in architecture, I am interested in the representation of buildings and how it changes their expressions. Her project, THE DOLLS HOUSE, showcases historical empire buildings like The Arch of Labna and the Roman Forum of Caesar being thrown away like toys inside a giant warehouse. She also adds a rotating light source that casts shadows on those buildings, simulating the idea of sunrise and sunset, which showcases the passage of time and the decay of nations. What draws me most is her play with algorithmic flickering patterns on walls filled with symbols of decayed nations and also logos of multinational companies, hinting that nothing could last forever. The result looks surreal and hypnotic, but at the same time refreshing and enlightening, which encourages the audience to contemplate on time.
Mimi Son’s Another Moon Another Moon is a project that was first unveiled at the 2021 Newnow festival and later at the Plasmata festival in 2022. The piece is a massive outdoor apparition replicating the moon. This “second moon” is produced by a cross-temporal reflection of sunlight that is then projected back into the sky. Son uses wireless networking, laser projectors, microcontrollers, batteries, solar panels, and detailed calibration to create this masterpiece. Interestingly, Another Moon can be seen up to half a mile away. I really appreciate the spiritual and scientific combination Son used to develop the Another Moon. Mimi Son was born, lives, and works in Seoul as an artistic director, professor, curator, and artist. Her master’s degree is in Digital Media Art and Design; she has an additional major in Interaction Design. In 2009 she and her partner Elliot Woods founded the art studio Kimchi and Chips. Her works are heavily influenced by Buddhist philosophy and geometry. Link: https://kimchiandchips.com/works/anothermoon/
The work I chose to look into for this week was the project called ‘Reverb’ by Madlab.CC. MadLab.CC is a research studio that aims to invent better ways to communicate with machines that make wearable crafts. MadLab.CC is headed by Madeline Gannon who is a researcher, designer, and educator that gradated with a PhD in Computational Design from CMU. She is also the founder and principal researcher at Atonation which is separate studio that aims to combine research, and functional alternate futures. Madlab.CC is headquartered in Pittsburgh, but she also gives lectures and talks around the whole world at various conferences.
The project, Reverb, is a context-aware 3D modeling environment that lets one personalize a piece of wearable print to their own body. The technology behind it consist of computer vision, digital design, and digital fabrication that ultimately translates the physical assets into printable geometry. Something I admire about the aspects of this project is the way the computational geometries are informed by human contours and gestures. This makes the technology feel as an integrated conversation with the real-world. For the general person, there is a sense of customization and having something “one of a kind”. Rather than fitting the human into some kind of computational form, the form is the one fitting around the human.
I looked into the work of artist Toni Dove, an experimental filmmaker based in New York City. Her work challenges the idea of what the moving 2d image is through the synthesis of tactile experiences and reactive live performance. A project of hers that I find particularly interested was a recent installation at the Ringling exhibition, entitled “The Dress that Eats Souls”. The concept of this project was to create a massive, hollow, motion capture suit, and to allow people to control its movement. As the performer wore this mo-cap suit, they experienced what others may have seen while wearing the dress, over the course of 200 years (fictitious). I feel that projects such as these, which involve the audience member on such an intimate and personal level, are re-shaping the medium of cinema, and creating something completely new from the aggregate of different senses and actions. I additionally love her philosophy on what the dress means to the human body, as, in the mo-cap relationship, the looming suit starts to “colonize” your body as you merge with it.
Heather Kelly, who also goes by Perfect Plum, is an indie game designer who currently works as an associate teaching professor at Carnegie Mellon University. She is a feminist and social justice advocate that aims to make video games and coding more accessible to everyone. Many of her programs focus on multi-sensory interactions or alternative methods of gameplay, such as her satiric, indie game “Guilty Smells”, in which the player takes the perspective of a police dog whose job it is to sniff out foreign food that is now outlawed in the USA. This game is connected to a console that emits smells relevant to the game in order for the player to determine if it’s American food or not. Kelly also designed “LikeLike”, a free website for independent game designers and artists to post their work without the hindrance of commodification.
Vera-Maria Glahn’s work “OPPO Unseen X” is compelling to me in that it evokes emotion through a non-traditional medium of digital texturing art. Each aspect of the campaign addresses a question:
UNSEEN SKY:What if the rays of light followed curves?
UNSEEN EARTH:What if we could zoom into Earth’s abundance of minerals?
UNSEEN SEA: What if we could capture the infinite power of flowing water?
“Unseen Sky”
Through analyzing varying layers of texture, and creating 3D interactive environments, Glahn hopes to achieve goals of mindfulness and self-reflection. I enjoy Glahn’s combination of organic patterns in nature with computer-generated designs, and personally, I believe pieces were very calming/introspective. Vera-Maria Glahn currently resides in Germany, employed as managing director/founding partner of FIELD.SYSTEMS, a studio for digital arts and future aesthetics. She primarily focuses on immersive motion graphic art with a cross-media approach, in the metaverse, interactive displays, and collaborating with brands such as Adidas and Ikea.
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