The Eyes, 2022
The Eyes, 2022Performance and Video Work. Performance runtime 35 minutes.
The Eyes uses a combination of the body- our original technology– and new media to refract the surveillance state through the myth of Io and Argus Panoptes. A giant covered entirely with eyes reimagined as a singular being covered with 20 cell phones, Panoptes is the panopticon embodied. The work traces Io's journey to regain body sovereignty as they navigate the fervent digital landscape of Argus’ simultaneous visions.
The Eyes, 2022Performance and Video Work. Performance runtime 35 minutes.
The Eyes uses a combination of the body- our original technology– and new media to refract the surveillance state through the myth of Io and Argus Panoptes. A giant covered entirely with eyes reimagined as a singular being covered with 20 cell phones, Panoptes is the panopticon embodied. The work traces Io's journey to regain body sovereignty as they navigate the fervent digital landscape of Argus’ simultaneous visions.
synonym for a circle, 2023
synonym for a circle, 2023Interactive Kinetic Sculpture and VR Work.
synonym for a circle is an interactive virtual reality experience that simulates a circle dance through user interaction with a kinetic sculpture. Allowing the viewer to engage in a dance of connection and disconenction. Inside the virtual reality, viewers are guided to hold hands with digital bodies, in turn, the viewers raise their hands and find two metal handholds. The VR then prompts viewers to move with digital dancers spinning in a circle, as the viewer begins to turn the sculpture spins guiding the viewer safely around the circle. Eventually, the digital circle dance ascends into the sky leaving the main viewer dislocated on the ground.
tether to, 2024
tether to, 2024Performances and Media Installation. Performance runtime 35 minutes.tether to is a performance that explores the numerous ways we are tethered to each other, our devices, and the refracted present playing back upon itself. A dance of screens and thumbs. The screens are a window, and when rotated reveal the past seen from a multitude of perspectives but never fully within view. The performance builds off of the Touch(ing) Screen workshop, which explores the relationship between digital and physical touch. In this performance, performers eventually are transformed into hands, becoming the embodiment of the scroll.
Touch(ing) Screen, 2024
Touch(ing) Screen, 2024
Ongoing Workshop and Video Work.
A touch workshop using custom made touch screens alongside their personal devices to help participants synesthetically remap touch back into their thumbs, training them to touch images, and feel digital bodies. Inspired by Montessori early education touch tablets, the workshop incrementally introduces more complex textures to retrain the sensation of touch back into our mono-textured screens.
[H.E.R.D.]
[ H E R D ]: an educational tool was developed over the course of several trips to the farm of local Swiss sheep farmers, Franz and Silvia Rouss. During these visits, I was able to observe the daily farm routines, and learned about their self-designed sheep archive, which included a handwritten logbook of all the sheep’s ear tags from last 20 years. I learned to milk each sheep, and filmed their movements.
In an effort to identify individual sheep within the heard, I developed my own catalog and facial tracking system. With the help of Franz Rouss, I utilized the milking process to document every individual within the herd. The resulting installation [H.E.R.D]: an educational tool includes a composite video of all of the herd being milked simultaneously, and a log book that identifies each sheep’s tag number, milking group, and milking position, as well as observational notes that document each sheep’s mobility, and general attitude. Alongside this, is a video of the facial tracking software identify specific sheep grazing in the field, and the barn. A corresponding worksheet allows viewers to test their identification abilities, by matching individual sheep to their tracking color. Audio plays over the installation identifying individual sheep ‘bahs’, and photos of the sheep tags hang on a small ladder from the farm. Finally, a sample of sheep’s wool, and several different samples of sheep’s milk are also displayed.
LiveStreamDérive, 2019
LiveStreamDérive, 20193-Channel Video Installation
In the video installation LiveStreamDérive non-localized voices control a silver body to explore a lush green landscape. Like a psuedo-video game, the installtion shows three first-person views. At times the player’s experiences convene, allowing the landscape to align and then schism as their paths diverge. With no mission or narrative the game is transformed into a digital dérive in which the players unpredictably try to push the limits of the silver body. Like an avatar, the body is almost always obedient. The video work positions the * viewer * in a third room: neither aligned with the silver body nor aligned with the position of the player. This way you can observe how the controller and controlled handle different versions of the same scenario. The whole construction is as much a work of art as a (pseudo-) scientific experiment to research how technology can be a mediator of human trust, or maybe of sadomasochistic control - depending on how it works.
Touch(ing) Screen, 2024
Ongoing Workshop and Video Work.
A touch workshop using custom made touch screens alongside their personal devices to help participants synesthetically remap touch back into their thumbs, training them to touch images, and feel digital bodies. Inspired by Montessori early education touch tablets, the workshop incrementally introduces more complex textures to retrain the sensation of touch back into our mono-textured screens.
[ H E R D ]: an educational tool was developed over the course of several trips to the farm of local Swiss sheep farmers, Franz and Silvia Rouss. During these visits, I was able to observe the daily farm routines, and learned about their self-designed sheep archive, which included a handwritten logbook of all the sheep’s ear tags from last 20 years. I learned to milk each sheep, and filmed their movements.
In an effort to identify individual sheep within the heard, I developed my own catalog and facial tracking system. With the help of Franz Rouss, I utilized the milking process to document every individual within the herd. The resulting installation [H.E.R.D]: an educational tool includes a composite video of all of the herd being milked simultaneously, and a log book that identifies each sheep’s tag number, milking group, and milking position, as well as observational notes that document each sheep’s mobility, and general attitude. Alongside this, is a video of the facial tracking software identify specific sheep grazing in the field, and the barn. A corresponding worksheet allows viewers to test their identification abilities, by matching individual sheep to their tracking color. Audio plays over the installation identifying individual sheep ‘bahs’, and photos of the sheep tags hang on a small ladder from the farm. Finally, a sample of sheep’s wool, and several different samples of sheep’s milk are also displayed.
LiveStreamDérive, 20193-Channel Video Installation
In the video installation LiveStreamDérive non-localized voices control a silver body to explore a lush green landscape. Like a psuedo-video game, the installtion shows three first-person views. At times the player’s experiences convene, allowing the landscape to align and then schism as their paths diverge. With no mission or narrative the game is transformed into a digital dérive in which the players unpredictably try to push the limits of the silver body. Like an avatar, the body is almost always obedient. The video work positions the * viewer * in a third room: neither aligned with the silver body nor aligned with the position of the player. This way you can observe how the controller and controlled handle different versions of the same scenario. The whole construction is as much a work of art as a (pseudo-) scientific experiment to research how technology can be a mediator of human trust, or maybe of sadomasochistic control - depending on how it works.
r/Generative-Isolation, 2020
r/Generative-Isolation, 2020Participatory Performance and 360 Video Work. Video runtime 7 minutes.
This crowdsourced installation was created during the early months of the COVID Pandemic as part of a digital residency hosted by MassGallery in Austin, TX. The gallery issued an open call, inviting viewers to virtually enter my studio space. From their remote locations, participants used vocal commands to direct a human avatar to explore the studio. Using various materials and tools stowed around the space, participants created new work or continued the work of prior participants, often leaving prompts and surprises for others to discover.
Each participant’s first person view was then mapped onto a 360° rendering of the studio. In the final virtual reality, viewers can witness the concurrent experiences of each participant. The remote viewer is intimately immersed in a narrative recreation of the isolated acts of collaboration. With the added mobility of a VR environment, viewers can follow individual threads of interaction or bask in the simultaneous fluid manipulation of the space by remote participants.
Schematics of Attention, 2023
Schematics of Attention, 2023Performance and Multi-Media Installation
Schematics of Attention is a dance of screens that diagrams the fractured and fervent experience of seeing today. In the immersive media performance, dancers rotate and spin monitors to reveal and obstruct video footage of a previous performance in the space only accessible by screen. The screens are a window, and when rotated reveal the past seen from a multitude of perspectives but never fully within view. After the performance, the installation is open for viewer interaction.
Sound Design by Lou Tandon
- Performers -
Bailey Mahaffey
Robbie Button
Jessica Warshal
Sydney Richardson
Kalea Escobosa
Rachel Odebunmi
Lilah Horton
Aurora Mititelu
Antigoni Tsagkaropoulou
Lou Tandon
Jacqueline Tsai
You Held the Door,
a Dodecahedron Formed, 2021
You Held the Door, a Dodecahedron Formed, 2021Interactive Media Installation Activated by Movement Artists
Movement Artists: Crescent, Selene Phillips, Abby Baldwin
Sound Collaborator: Davis Polito
You Held the Door, a Dodecahedron Formed utilizes body tracking to translate the physical and emotional distance between users into infographic representations. The work co-opts the language of the Sociogram, an infographic used to track the evolution of relationships within social groups. Red lines delineate the shifting spatial distance between bodies. An abstract soundscape is controlled live by the distance between bodies, the number of bodies detected, and their spatial positioning. The work ponders the representation of relationships while creating a space for relations to form.
This work was shown at an Interactive Art and Experimental Sound exhibition. Movement artists activated the interactive media Installation for a 30-minute performance, at all other times the work was open for the public to interact with.
This project was completed with support from The Frank-Ratchye Studio for Creative Inquiry.
Embodying Data Workshop Series, 2016-2019
Tethered, 2022
Tethered, 2022
A collaboration between Julianna Johnston, Tom Scherlis and Cat Yochum
Tethered is an immersive projection and sound installation that is controlled by the gameplay of a tetherball match. Visuals and sound are generated live based on the position of the ball and progress of gameplay.
A collaboration between Julianna Johnston, Tom Scherlis and Cat Yochum
Tethered is an immersive projection and sound installation that is controlled by the gameplay of a tetherball match. Visuals and sound are generated live based on the position of the ball and progress of gameplay.
emergent technologies, 2021
Community Based Emergent Technologies, 2021Interactive Video Essay played on 15 Cellphones
An interactive video essay played across 15 cellphones that explores community based emergent technologies through an examination of the concept of emergence, as described in Manuel DeLanda’s ‘Philosophy and Simulation: The Emergence of Synthetic Reason’. Combining theory and praxis the video essay prompts participants to rearrange the phones based on diagrams to reveal images and videos that exemplify forms of emergence and community based emergent technologies.
The video essay concludes with an attempt to create emergence. The phones display wooden sticks that must be arranged into a pile. Viewers are prompted to rub their hands above the sticks to help ignite a fire that emerges between them.
Touching the Eyes of Argus, 2022
Touching the Eyes of Argus, 20213-Channel Video Installation, 5 Minutes
An attempt to translate touch through vision using experimental photogrammetry. A 3-channel video installation displaying collaged footage of a movement workshop documented with the 'Eyes of Argus' wearable, a suit that simultaneously records from 20 phones mounted to a body. A 3D photogrammetry model of workshop participants was created using the multiple viewpoints the phone suits provide. Individual videos from the suit were then mapped onto the 3D model. In attempting to capture the entire physical experience of the ‘Eyes of Argus’ suit wearer, the video emphasizes how media can obscure the actuality of experience and relationships.