Reviewing

The Workings of Media Art and Artists

Dafna Naphtali, Jakob Dwight, Valérie Hallier, Charlotte Mundy, Andrew Demirjian, Joseph Morris, Sergey Kasich

Mari Kimura, Viv Corringham, Amanda Gutierrez, Nick Hwang, Eric Sheffield, Anthony T. Marasco, Surabhi Saraf, Dorothy Santos

The Workings of Media [Art and Artists] is a series of presentations, workshops, open studios and exhibitions to understand social and cultural changes reflected through the lens of art and artists.  Curator and director Carol Parkinson has selected these artists because of their use of the new media technology including data sonification and visualization, immersive sound, smell and social networks.  The Art and Technology program is a component of our Creative Residency and Sponsored Projects programs and seeks to create a responsive public context for the appreciation of new work and to advance the art’s community and the public’s appreciation of the use of technology in art.

The series began on May 8, 2021 with an exhibition that includes the following artists until the closing on August 8, 2021.

View the Exhibition Catalog here

Watch excerpts from performances here

Dafna Naphtali: AUDIO CHANDELIER: POLYÉLAIOS , a multi-channel audio speaker sculpture created in collaboration with metalsmith/designer Ayala Naphtali.

Jakob Dwight: Autonomous Prism | Solarwind Over Sorrow, two lightboxes exploring cinematographic and illuminated abstraction through LED screens and N’CHI,  a sci-fi world-building app and micronation generator for mobile smartphone.

Valérie Hallier: Scream Now, an open-air public screaming booth that takes the fundamental  yet repressed human expression, the scream,  to generate visual art. An RSVP to screamnow44@gmail.com is required to participate.

Charlotte Mundy: Light as a Feather, an immersive sound, light and scent installation inspired by the healing, psychedelic visions of medieval abbess Hildegard of Bingen and the visionary 1949 film The Wizard of OZ.

Andrew Demirjian: Recalibrating, Extrapolating new research in Machine Learning, this sound and visual installation of speculative fiction explores the notions of artificial curiosity and machine self-actualization through the lens of non-human consciousness, languages of communication and the poetry of interfaces. Artist Talk: July 23, 2021

Joseph Morris: Scintillator uses computer-controlled electromagnets to turn inverted wine glasses into sonic resonators, similar to the vibrations created when you rub your finger along the rim of a glass.  However, in this work, the sonic composition is activated by an embedded cosmic ray muon detector. Scintillator illuminates and sonifies these events as they pass through the space in this room. 

Sergey Kasich: fFlower-room (a room with the FingerRing interface) has an 8-channel sound system and a FrR-interface (a.k.a. fFlower). Everyone is welcomed to come and play with the interface and explore its possibilities.

PERFORMANCES

Mari Kimura: MUGIC Magic. A demonstration of the Violin with motion sensor designed for musicians, performers, dancers and beyond followed by a performance of her composition Rossby Waving inspired by climate change.

Viv Corringham and Amanda Gutierrez: Walking in Azcapotalco, a live duo performance containing 360 video, field recordings, voice and electronic voice processing.

Nick Hwang, Eric Sheffield and Anthony T. Marasco: Collab-Hub, a tool for interconnected audiovisual performance and installations. A workshop followed by a performance by the participants that is documented on the Harvestworks YouTube channel.

Surabhi Saraf and Dorothy Santos: Body in Transit. Made during the 2016 US election as countless individuals grappled with the imposed immigration ban, Body in Transit explores the anxiety and disorientation of displacement through transit and forced migration. Online on Harvestworks YouTube channel.

  • Harvestworks programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Jakob Dwight

Originally trained as a painter, Jakob Dwight was drawn to digital
software as an opportunity to explore the transformative impact of digital media on
painting and the painterly perspective. Inspired by the opiated, meditative quality
of the screen-based televisual space, the artist employs multiple media including
painting, drawing, digital photography, collage and smartphone apps to explore the
contemporary modes of image-making and viewing, and the televisual art experience
itself. Dwight’s work has been presented internationally, including in Amsterdam,
Los Angeles, Berlin, Atlanta, Vienna, and New York. He has exhibited in Kassel,
Germany as part of the Kreuzberg Pavillon at dOCUMENTA (13), 2012. In the same year,
he was awarded the Harvestworks New Works residency in New York. In 2010, Dwight was
invited to attend GlogauAIR artists’ residency in Germany, and in the following
year, 2011, he was awarded a United States artist’s residency. As part of the
Aesthetics & Therapeutics Lab, a collectively run platform developed to initiate
installations and experiments in immersive art and healing, Dwight has installed a
multi-sensory environment at Vortex Immersion Media Dome in LA in 2014. He was
commissioned by the Seattle Art Museum to create new work for the Disguise: Masks
and Global African Art exhibition at UCLA’s Fowler Museum, which traveled to the
Brooklyn Museum, New York in April 2016.

Valérie Hallier

Inspired by the French Medieval “crieur public”, ScreamNow is the first
public screaming booth of an upcoming series. The artwork takes a fundamental yet
repressed human expression to generate visuals. ScreamNow: Inside/Out reflects our
current social distancing and deeply transformative times. The new set up expands in
space with a studio, adding the concept of Inside/Out to the project’s original
purpose of offering a sanctuary for people to scream their heart out. The screams
generated from inside are released outside, shielded by the open booth structure.
Recorded via a microphone in the booth, the screams are processed inside of the
studio. Flower petals picked outside are covering the walls of the studio where the
recorded screams are transformed into visuals and projected back in and out of the
booth. The screamer can instantly visualize the power generated by her voice.
Hallier’s work explores how control and its release color the dynamics between the
natural, the human and the technological realms. Her multimedia work aims to break
away from the patriarchal hegemony of vision as our primary sense. By stimulating
all senses, the artist’s goal is to offer spaces where meaningful experiences can be
created and new scenarii on being can be imagined. Hallier’s early multimedia work
has received prizes at ACM Siggraph (FL), SCAN Arts Symposium (PA), Ars Electronica
in Finland and Anima Mundi in Brazil. She has shown her work internationally, in the
US with most recently a solo show at NARS Foundation this past February 2020, at
BRIC Arts Media, MediaNoche gallery and CAS Arts Center in New York. In Europe, solo
shows venues include the ESAM in Caen, France and Nadiana Idriss gallery in Berlin,
Germany. Group shows in the US include Trestle gallery, A.I.R. gallery, BRIC,
Brooklyn Council for the Arts and Dumbo Arts Center in Brooklyn, SVA Flatiron
gallery and Tribes galleries in Manhattan, and The Housatonic Museum (CT). Hallier
worked on a commission for the Drawing Center (NYC) and was selected for BRIC’s
first edition Biennial in Brooklyn. Residencies include LMCC Swing Space artist
residency on Governors Island, Pioneer Works, NARS Foundation, Trestle Art Space and
currently Harvestworks New Work Residency in NYC.

Charlotte Mundy

Created by vocalist and composer Charlotte Mundy, ‘Light as a Feather’
is a ghost opera inspired by the parlor room of 10a Nolan Park. In a room covered in
sighing pink tissue paper, invisible voices beckon, whisper, growl and swirl around
listeners, lights glow and change color, and floral scents waft through the space.
Light as a Feather takes inspiration from the healing, psychedelic visions of
medieval abbess Hildegard of Bingen; the visionary 1949 film The Wizard of Oz; and
girlish sleepover games. Spanning 24 minutes and three scenes, the ghost opera will
not feature any live performers, but will feature Mundy’s own layered and stretched
voice channeled through an eight-speaker array, accompanied by simple machines built
and programmed by Mundy with multimedia artist Melody Loveless. Mundy’s compositions
have been presented on the Chance and Circumstance Festival, Resonant Bodies
Festival, and Periapsis Music and Dance series. As a soloist, founding member of TAK
Ensemble and core member of Ekmeles vocal ensemble, she is one of the foremost
voices shaping contemporary music in New York City today. Mundy specializes in music
that is new, daring and sublime. She has been called a “daredevil with an
unbreakable spine” (SF Classical Voice), and her performances have been described as
“an oasis of radiant beauty” (NYTimes) and “marvelously appealing” (The Log). Mundy
was awarded the Jan DeGaetani prize for contemporary song performance from the 2019
Joy in Singing Competition, and has performed with the Resonant Bodies Festival, BAM
New Wave Festival and New York Festival of Song. She has appeared as a soloist at
the 92nd Street Y, Metropolitan Museum, Park Avenue Armory and the Library of
Congress and given critically acclaimed renditions of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire,
Boulez’s Le Marteau sans Maître, Feldman’s Three Voices and Messiaen’s Poémes Pour
Mí. Mundy “slays the thorniest material like it’s nothing” (WQXR) with TAK ensemble
at venues including Issue Project Room, Miller Theater and the Look and Listen
festival; she sings stratospheric microtonal lines with Ekmeles vocal ensemble at
venues including The Kitchen and Philadelphia’s Rotunda. Mundy was a host of WQXR’s
new music station, Q2music, from 2012-2015 and currently co-hosts, co-edits and
co-produces the TAK Editions Podcast. Her compositions have been featured on the
Resonant Bodies Festival, Chance and Circumstance Festival, Periapsis Music and
Dance festival, Higher Ground festival and Broad Statements. She has lectured on
writing for voice and participated in readings, workshops and performances of
student compositions at institutions including Columbia University, Princeton, Yale,
Stanford, Cornell, McGill, and Juilliard. Mundy studied at the Contemporary
Performance Program at the Manhattan School of Music, and the Faculty of Music at
the University of Toronto. She was born and raised in Toronto, Canada and currently
resides in Brooklyn.

Sergey Kasich

Sergey Kasich is an interdisciplinary artist, curator and producer with
focus in sound arts, technological media and music. Graduated as a Psychology major
in 2006 from Lomonosov’s MSU, he was involved in postgraduate research in behavioral
genetics and psychodiagnostics until 2010, while at the same time being a permanent
resident at a studio for electronic music at the Theremin Center of Moscow State
Conservatory. For 2012-2013 he joined an international research program at STRELKA
institute for media, architecture and design to study urban data collection and
processing and D.I.Y. and “hacker\maker” culture around the world. In 2011 he
initiated SoundArtist.ru (a.k.a. SA)) ) – the Russian sound arts community. And
later in 2014 he founded Moscow Sound Art Gallery SA))_gallery and Moscow Sound Art
Studio SA))_studio. From 2011 until 2018 he has lectured in Rodchenko’s Art School
in Moscow on the topic of technologic basics of interactive arts. Kasich curates and
produces critically acclaimed events and projects supported by residents of SA))
which include: an annual festival, exhibitions and international showcases. Since
2008 kasich’s artistic practice has focused on interactive and generative sound and
multimedia art installations, performances and mixed media projects. Kasich also
works as a composer and sound-producer across a broad spectrum of the performing
arts from theatrical productions and performances to pop-music.

Viv Corringham and Amanda Gutierrez

Walking in Azcapotalco, a live duo performance containing 360 video, field recordings, voice and electronic voice processing.

Nick Hwang, Eric Sheffield and Anthony T. Marasco

Collab-Hub, a tool for interconnected audiovisual performance and installations. A workshop followed by a performance by the participants that is documented on the Harvestworks YouTube channel.

Surabhi Saraf and Dorothy Santos

Body in Transit. Made during the 2016 US election as countless individuals grappled with the imposed immigration ban, Body in Transit explores the anxiety and disorientation of displacement through transit and forced migration.