mfa Exhibition 2009 /Artist Information


EXHIBITION TITLE: interACTIVATE


Contacts:




Included in interACTIVATE I:


Listen

Rupa Dhillon


45-WORD DESCRIPTION:
Rupa Dhillon's Listen is an immersive listening space in which sound is experienced by the body, ears, and eyes. The installation calls attention to the otherwise ignored multisensory nature of sound by allowing the sounds to be felt, heard, and seen.

100-WORD DESCRIPTION:
Rupa Dhillon’s Listen is an immersive listening space in which sound is experienced by the body, ears, and eyes. The installation seeks to redefine the term “listening” by calling attention to the multisensory nature of sound by allowing it to be heard, felt, and seen.

At the core of the installation is a ten-channel speaker system consisting of six subwoofers placed inside a purpose-built bed, with four additional speakers surrounding the space. The bed allows visitors to feel the sounds through their bodies and a visualization of the soundscape is projected directly above it. The effect is that of a full body surround sound experience.

THE ARTIST WISHES TO THANK: Her parents, Ralph Abraham, Elliot Anderson, Benjamin Carson, Peter Elsea, Ben Jaffe, Leonel Diaz, Mic Rutledge, Locus, Jeremy Larsson, Kitty, and Thomas Wilmering.

MEDIUM FOR WALL LABEL:
Speakers, wood, projection, fabric, foam

IMAGE FOR PRESS PURPOSES: hi-res web_Rupa_Listen2.jpg

CAPTION FOR IMAGE:
Rupa Dhillon, Listen, speakers, projection, wood, foam, and fabric


The great NON-MALAYSIAN portrait

Roopesh Sitharan


45 WORD DESCRIPTION:
The great NON-MALAYSIAN portrait is a site-specific, interactive installation that captures and transforms the shadow of an audience into an object of display. By inviting active participation of the viewer in the presentation of the artwork, the artist questions the formal environment of an exhibition space, shaped by the cultural history of the West.

100 WORD DESCRIPTION:
Roopesh Sitharan's project entitled “The great NON-MALAYSIAN portrait” is a site-specific, interactive installation that captures and transforms the shadow of an audience into an object of display. By inviting active participation of the viewer in the presentation of the artwork, the artist questions the formal environment of an exhibition space, shaped by the cultural history of the West. Using the methodologies of exhibition-making as a tool for the creation of the piece, the installation (as artwork and exhibition) models non-western aesthetic theory by framing the unification of an artist, curator and audience through the method of display.

MEDIUM FOR WALL LABEL:
LCD-screen, empty frame, computerized surveillance system, custom-made software

IMAGE FOR PRESS PURPOSES: hi-res web_Roopesh_MFA.jpg

CAPTION FOR IMAGE:
Roopesh Sitharan, The great NON-MALAYSIAN portrait, projection, video, empty frame


Blissomatic Surreal

Melanie k Stewart


45-WORD DESCRIPTION:
Melanie Stewart’s Blissomatic Surreal is a two-part mixed media installation of private and public space. Private space signifies the humanistic ideologies emanating from the sixties, and seventies about creating personally more satisfying lives. Conversely, public space represents the realities of a techno-centric pace currently invading twenty-first century life.

100-WORD DESCRIPTION:
Melanie Stewart’s two-part installation the Blissomatic Surreal is based on her own love-hate relationship with technology. As an installation artist, she embraces technological tools in the fusion of video, photo manipulation, and sound collages with traditional arts. Conversely she cringes at the bleed of professional life into personal life due to “always with us” and ”always on” technologies like email and cell phones. With the installation the Blissomatic Surreal the artist juxtaposes the contemporary fervor over accessibility and productivity, against a sentimental perspective about the simpler joys of life associated with the sixties and seventies. Her installation leaves the audience to confront their own personal map of the breakdown between these two spaces.

THANK YOU:
Artistic, conceptual, technical and curatorial assistance was generously provided by the following artists, scholars, performers, and mentors: Ralph Abraham, John Barnett, Lindsey Bonk, Lesley Cuevas, David Cuthbert, Cindy Lee, Chau-Marie Griffiths, Soraya Murray, Fabricio and Saki Olsson, Melanie Santos, Josh Mc-Veigh-Schultz, Cathy Soussloff, Beth Stephens, Lyle Troxell, and Beth Warren. In significant ways Melanie’s parents, Johanne and George Lewis, contributed to the unusual perspectives about hope, humanity, and technology relationally contextualized within this two-part exhibit. A special thank you is extended to the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, and the University of California, Santa Cruz, Digital Arts and New Media program. Melanie dedicates her exhibition to her loving husband, Martin Belohradsky, and their remarkable son, Adam, for their sacrifices and ongoing support during the last two years while she developed this body of work while living mostly away from home.

61-WORD BIO:
Melanie Stewart holds a BFA in fine art from California State University, Stanislaus, and is currently an MFA candidate at University of California, Santa Cruz. As an artist and designer, Stewart has always been obsessed with the metaphors of space. Stewart’s method is to layer and veil visual double-entendres employing software, painting, sculpture, print, text, architecture, light, sound, video, and photography.

MEDIUM FOR WALL LABELS:

  1. Blissomatic Surreal: What Is and What Should Have Been
    a two-part mixed media installation using film and photography projection, film, craft, and printmaking techniques.
  2. Wall text in public/projection area space:
    (large 6'sign) sit… listen… watch… read… reflect…

IMAGE FOR PRESS PURPOSES: hi-res web_mstewart_tv.jpg

CAPTION FOR IMAGE:
Melanie k Stewart, Looking Back on Hope, film, photography, and video projection

Included in interACTIVATE II


I saved $17K living in my office. Then I bought a house.
(is17klotbh)

Troy Allman


45-WORD DESCRIPTION:
Troy Allman’s I saved $17K living in my office. Then I bought a house. is the result of a 42-week endurance piece, in which an occupational office was used as a primary living space. This unique living situation made possible the purchase of a property whose function is to activate an existing community in Toledo Ohio. This project provides a satirical commentary on alternative living during times of economic uncertainty. This installation displays images, video, and artifacts from this process.

100-WORD DESCRIPTION:
Troy Allman’s I saved $17K living in my office. Then I bought a house. is the result of a 42-week endurance piece, in which an occupational office was used as a primary living space. This unique living situation made possible the purchase of a property whose function is to activate an existing community in Toledo Ohio. This project began during the onset of the mortgage crisis of 2008 and provides a satirical commentary on alternative living during times of economic uncertainty. Specifically, this is the story of an individual’s ability to use creativity as a means to harness resources. This installation displays images, video, and artifacts from this process.

MEDIUM FOR WALL LABEL:
Mixed media

IMAGE FOR PRESS PURPOSES: hi-res web_troy_image.jpg

CAPTION FOR IMAGE:
Troy Allman, I saved $17K living in my office. Then I bought a house.


Feminist Craft Corner

Miki Yamada Foster


45-WORD DESCRIPTION
Miki Yamada Foster’s Feminist Craft Corner is a public access television show and an installation of collaborative Do-It-Yourself experiments in crafting and technology. These interactive craft pieces encourage participants to playfully engage with objects through the activation of a queer and feminist framework, produced through the selection of content and the construction of form.

100-WORD DESCRIPTION
Miki Yamada Foster’s Feminist Craft Corner is a public access television show and an installation of collaborative Do-It-Yourself (DIY) experiments in crafting and technology. The public access show invites the audience to question their assumptions about how we speak about technology and who can speak for it. The episodes enact a queer staging of media production for the purposes of educating its audience about the intersections of DIY, crafting and technology. These interactive craft pieces encourage participants to playfully engage with objects through the activation of a queer and feminist framework, produced through the selection of content and the construction of form. The piece Talking Blanket uses embroidery, LED lights and sound to tell different versions of stories that activate different places on the blanket.

The Feminist Craft Corner public access show production team features the work of Lindsay Kelley, Lorenzo Estebanéz, Jessy Lancaster, Lucas McGranahan and Kaori Suzuki.

MEDIUM FOR WALL LABEL:
Single-Channel video, handcrafted electronics, LilyPad Arduino, embroidery floss, conductive thread, fabric

IMAGE FOR PRESS PURPOSES: hi-res web_Miki_radcloudwithtextcopy.jpg

CAPTION FOR IMAGE:
Miki Yamada Foster, The FCC is Electronically Embroidered


In Situ ∆

g. craig hobbs


45-WORD DESCRIPTION:
g. craig hobbs’ In Situ ∆ links the viewer to narrative trajectories of sound and image, opening an ontological inquiry into bodies and the forces of nature as generators of extensity, sensation, and affect. In Situ ∆ encourages spatial exploration in the form of the embodied search. (note: In Situ ∆ consists of a delta symbol (option/ "j" on the mac)

100-WORD DESCRIPTION:
g. craig hobbs’ In Situ ∆ links the viewer to narrative trajectories of sound and image, opening an ontological inquiry into bodies and the forces of nature as generators of extensity, sensation, and affect. In Situ ∆ encourages spatial exploration in the form of the embodied search. The search is revealed not as a computational feat, but as an engaged exploration of space. The process of searching is embodied by the viewer who maintains a direct role in content acquisition and playback via kwpe/, an open-source keyword tagging environment.

MEDIUM FOR WALL LABEL:
audio, video, programming, computers, infrared cameras, silk plant
2009
g. craig hobbs
http://www.kwpe.org

IMAGE FOR PRESS PURPOSES: hi-res web_Craig_thesis_img.jpg

CAPTION FOR IMAGE:
In Situ ∆ audio, video, programming, computers, infrared cameras, silk plant
2009
g. craig hobbs
http://www.kwpe.org


Starvation Seeds

Lindsay Kelley


45-WORD DESCRIPTION:
Lindsay Kelley's Starvation Seeds offers a quiet meditation on sustenance and loss. Through the cultivation and preservation of plants and family history, her greenhouse installation reveals the mutable constitution of bodies and identities, and how what we eat and where we travel changes us.

100-WORD DESCRIPTION:
Lindsay Kelley's Starvation Seeds offers a quiet meditation on sustenance and loss. Often called "starvation nuts," the protein-rich seeds of the piñon tree have long been a staple food in New Mexico and Arizona. Kelley's greenhouse installation explores how the piñon interfaces with a range of starvation survivors, from the conquistadors to the Donner party to members of our own families. Opportunities to participate in the cultivation and preservation of piñon nuts will happen throughout the exhibition, both in the museum and in other locations around Santa Cruz.

MEDIUM FOR WALL LABEL:
Seedlings, seeds, video, greenhouse

IMAGE FOR PRESS PURPOSES: hi-res web_Lindsay_starvation_seeds.jpg

CAPTION FOR IMAGE:
Lindsay Kelley, Starvation Seeds


Synaptic Crowd: Vox Pop Experiments

Joshua McVeigh-Schultz


45-WORD DESCRIPTION:
Joshua McVeigh-Schultz's Synaptic Crowd: Vox Pop Experiments is an interactive performance in which online participants collaboratively select interview questions to be relayed via mobile phone. The project seeks to involve distributed audiences in the real-time flow of vox pop ("on the street") interview interactions.

100-WORD DESCRIPTION:
Joshua McVeigh-Schultz's Synaptic Crowd: Vox Pop Experiments is an interactive performance in which online participants collaboratively select interview questions to be relayed via mobile phone. Willing interviewees can call to hear questions selected by a live audience while their response is broadcast online. By interjecting distributed audiences into the real-time flow of interview interactions, Synaptic Crowd destabilizes the performative context of the traditional "on the street" interview and points to new possibilities for distributed audiences to intervene in public space.

Assisted by Brian Alexakis

MEDIUM FOR WALL LABEL:
Monitor with headphones

IMAGE FOR PRESS PURPOSES: hi-res web_Josh_Vox_Pop_Carnival.jpg

CAPTION FOR IMAGE:
Joshua McVeigh-Schultz, Vox Pop Experiments, interactive performance


Balkan Song

Nada Miljković


45-WORD DESCRIPTION:
Nada Miljković's Balkan Song presents an endurance performance piece and multi-channel video installation as the means to explore Sevdah, a musical tradition and emotion about the pain from separation of love. Balkan Song inspires the participants to reflect on identities, gender and agency.

100-WORD DESCRIPTION:
Nada Miljković's Balkan Song, performance and multi-media installation, explores Sevdah, a musical tradition and emotion about the pain from separation of love. In the Balkans, Sevdah is a tradition sung by those forced into marriage in an extreme patriarchal society, a culture that objectified women as commodity. Sevdahlinke (sevdah songs) are of slavery. Through experiencing the endurance piece and/or video documentation, Balkan Song inspires the participants to reflect on identities, gender and agency in the past and present.

MEDIUM FOR WALL LABEL:
Video art featuring interviews and Sevdah songs and explorations

IMAGE FOR PRESS PURPOSES: hi-res web_Nada_balkansong_master.jpg

CAPTION FOR IMAGE:
Nada Miljković, Balkan Song


R-Shief

Laila Shereen Sakr <VJ Um Amel>


45-WORD DESCRIPTION:
Laila Shereen Sakr <VJ Um Amel> works with ideas and methodologies of information architecture and visualization. Her current project, R-Shief is an initiative that provides provide a multilingual database for archival and innovative research purposes on issues relevant to a 21st century, transnational Arab public. The June 2009 beta launch will archive Gaza, Palestine. http://r-shief.org

100-WORD DESCRIPTION:
R-Shief will launch its beta version in June 2009 on Gaza, Palestine. This is an initiative in the field of knowledge production that distinguishes a contemporary Arab transnational public as an emerging voice on the world stage deserving serious attention given this community’s role in current geopolitical, international, and transcultural agendas. The R-Shief Initiative provides a database of original essays and narratives, interactive projects, digital video, and project documentation, as well as guides on how to do research in the Middle East. R-Shief invites its users into new forms of participation, and semantically indexes and archives every separable unit in Arabic and English. http://r-shief.org

MEDIUM FOR WALL LABEL:
computer stations, projection, video, online, publication, Arabic

IMAGE FOR PRESS PURPOSES: hi-res web_LailaS_R-shief_logo.jpg

CAPTION FOR IMAGE:
Laila Shereen Sakr, R-Shief, a multilingual database for archival and innovative research purposes


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