Christina Freeman
Visiting Assistant Professor, Haverford College
Presentations by the following NMC members:
Thomas Asmuth, Victoria Bradbury, Billy Colbert, Andrew Demirjian, Zoe Doubleday, Ashley S. Ferro-Murray, Brandon S. Gellis, Lydia Grey, Rebecca Hackemann, James Huckenpahler, Randall Packer, Ashley Scarlett, Tamiko Thiel, Maida Withers, and Andreas Zingerle and Linda Kronman (KairUs Art collective).
In the first century BCE, the Roman architect Vitruvius theorized that the structure for ancient Greek columns originated from the tree trunk. This idea is later supported in accounts by the geographer, Pausanias, who traveled throughout Greece during the 2nd Century CE, noting that the “first temple to Apollo at Delphi was a hut made of laurel trees.” [1] That trees were the original architectural supports for sacred spaces used in ceremonial activities is almost certainly not an accident: the tree’s form is a network of roots, stems and nodes, a design that reminds us of a larger interconnectedness. We make visual reference to trees when mapping family or other social relations, to brainstorm thoughts, and in charting electronic networks. The tree serves both as a literal and figurative source of life and knowledge.
The seventh annual New Media Caucus Showcase took place on the stage of the Armand Hammer Auditorium in the Corcoran School of Arts & Design in Washington D.C. Marked by Doric columns reminiscent of ancient temples, and tiered seating styled after the Greek amphitheater, the auditorium’s design added a layer of historical grounding to the night’s activities. While the presenters were selected by lottery and ordered alphabetically, areas of overlap surfaced throughout the evening: an overwhelming number presented work with a social, interactive or collaborative element. Inside this setting inspired by classical architecture within the nation’s capital, the origins of democracy, civic engagement, and social interdependence were extant.

Victoria Bradbury NMC Showcase presentation, 2016, © Photo by Andreas Zingerle. (Used with Permission.)

Data Raft, 2014, Victoria Bradbury, University of Sunderland, © Victoria Bradbury. (Used with Permission.)
Victoria Bradbury’s 2014 work, Data Raft, gives participants the opportunity to create tangible versions of the otherwise invisible world of their own email metadata. Once inside the gallery space, participants work with the artist to access their data points contained in code, translating the information into the physical form of a small raft with data embroidered on its sail.

Episodic Memory Flash 1: Color Conundrum, 2016, Billy Colbert, Digitized 8mm film, © Billy Colbert. (Used with Permission.)

Episodic Memory Flash 3: Color Conundrum, 2016, Billy Colbert, Digitized 8mm film, © Billy Colbert. (Used with Permission.)
Billy Colbert makes short films sourcing found footage from vintage home videos of African American families. While he is not personally connected to the particular people in the films, he is interested in archiving their stories to bring forward a complex and nuanced image of African Americans lives in the United States. By re-contextualizing the vernacular imagery, Colbert makes the potentially invisible content available to a new audience.

Color Yourself Inspired™, 2016, Andrew Demirjian, net art, © Demirjian-Proctor. (Used with Permission.)

Color Yourself Inspired™, 2016, Andrew Demirjian, net art, © Demirjian-Proctor. (Used with Permission.)
Color Yourself Inspired™ is a collaborative project created by Andrew Demirjian and James Proctor. Reversing the relationship of color and language typically employed in commercial color-naming systems, the pair play with the possibilities of language dictating color. Working with the Benjamin Moore Color Gallery and the linguistic parameters that come with it, Demirjian and Proctor let the grammatical structure of language determine various algorithms for outputting color relationships. As such, the rules of language replace the traditional role of color theory.
Zoe Doubleday’s Haptika proposes a DIY method for survivors of trauma to reduce the debilitating effects of their past experience. Doubleday’s wearable kits invite participants to build haptic gloves using open source technology and Arduino. The Empower glove connects the action of clenching a fist to a light going on, reinforcing somatic awareness. By connecting the Galaxy Glove to an external visual environment, the user’s motion is correlated with play, change and possibility.

Noisense, 2010, Ashley Ferro-Murray, media-based choreography, © Ashley Ferro-Murray. (Used with Permission.)
Ashley Ferro-Murray’s choreography looks at corporeal relationships to digital media. All elements of her process—from sensors to the dancing body itself—are considered as technological elements within the stage setting. Her works address sensory oversaturation, the objectifying gaze, illness, and the line between the virtual and the real. In Noisence, dancers improvised monologues about media presence in their own lives, while mimicking movements by the audience. Costumes, interactive sound panels, contact mics and projected images created an immersive environment.

Therapeutic Nightmare, 2015, Brandon S. Gellis, Mixed Media, wood and acrylic, Max MSP visual programming, creative coding, live video mapping, © Brandon S. Gellis. (Used with Permission.)

Therapeutic Nightmare, 2015, Brandon S. Gellis, Mixed Media, wood and acrylic, Max MSP visual programming, creative coding, live video mapping, © Brandon S. Gellis. (Used with Permission.)
Therapeutic Nightmare, 2015, Brandon S. Gellis, Mixed Media, wood and acrylic, Max MSP visual programming, creative coding, live video mapping, © Brandon S. Gellis. (Used with Permission.)
Based as much on personal experience as Andy Warhol’s Death and Disaster series, Brandon S. Gellis’ Therapeutic Nightmare is a reimagining of the traditional family dinner table. Responding to the historical practice of electroshock therapy as a “cure” for homosexuality, each seat at the table is a custom-designed electric chair. Projecting symbolic familial imagery onto the plates, while playing audio referencing these same social structures, the installation invites participants to engage in conversation around conceptions of the contemporary family unit.

Love Letters, 2000-2003, Lydia Grey, conceptual collection/installation, © Lydia Grey. (Used with Permission.)
Lydia Grey’s participatory works invite the audience to contribute reflections on personal experience, responding to such universal themes as nourishment, romance, and mortality. In Love Letters, Grey observes the gamut of ways individuals seek out romantic love. Data collected from personal ads reveals the wide range of human desires, what individuals are willing to sacrifice for love, and the vulnerabilities—both physical and emotional—they voluntarily share.

The Public Utteraton Machine, Installation shot, Queens, NY, 2015, Rebecca Hackemann, solar powered electronic steel interactive sculpture, © Rebecca Hackemann. (Used with Permission.)

The Public Utteraton Machine, Detail of screen, 2015, Rebecca Hackemann, solar powered electronic steel interactive sculpture, © Rebecca Hackemann. (Used with Permission.)
During the spring of 2015, Rebecca Hackemann’s 19th Century styled public telephones were placed in two public locations in Brooklyn and Queens. Entitled Public Utteraton Machines, the phones connected directly to a series of prompts inviting passersby to answer questions regarding the value of public art. More than 300 recordings were collected and are available through an online archive at http://utteraton.com.

all pleasures are guilty, 2016, James Huckenpahler, digital image, © James Huckenpahler. (Used with Permission.)

unsolicited miracle, 2016, James Huckenpahler, digital image, © James Huckenpahler. (Used with Permission.)
Mimmo Rotello, the eponym for James Huckenphaler’s app Mimmo, was a 1950’s Italian artist known for his in involvement in the Affichiste movement. A precursor to contemporary street art, the group was named for the collages it created by tearing advertising posters in public space. Taking a similar aesthetic principle into the digital realm, Mimmo layers three images from the artist’s collection at random, followed by the application of a luma key filter. As this filter is programmed to make the darkest areas of an image transparent, it creates the look of torn paper by revealing areas of the image layers below.
Hosted by Randall Packer, The Post Reality Show critiques our contemporary state of media oversaturation by adopting its very form and aesthetic. Performing from an underground studio, referred to by the artist as his “bunker,” Packer’s Internet broadcast embraces the seductive nature of mainstream media’s short attention span. Employing tactics of fragmentation, misinformation, spectacle, and data overload, he plays within a liminal state, somewhere between the actual and virtual.

Shades of Absence: Governing Bodies, Corcoran Gallery of Art, U.S. Capitol, Corcoran Gallery 31, 2013, Tamiko Thiel, augmented reality and fine art prints on vellum, © Tamiko Thiel. (Used with Permission.)
Tamiko Thiel’s geo-located augmented reality (AR) project, Shades of Absence: Governing Bodies, counters the invisibility caused by U.S. government censorship of the visual arts. While activating the AR technology, users see silhouettes of censored artists along with language used to justify their censorship. Touching the smartphone screen allows users to access information on each censored artist.

MindFluctuations, 2015, Maida Withers, interactive ‘live” performance, © Maida Withers Dance Construction Company. (Used with Permission.)
Maida Withers’ performance piece MindFluctuations featured dancers performing choreographed movements while wearing Brain Controlled Interfaces called Emotiv. These headsets register the dancers’ emotional responses, transferring this information into virtual 3D environments. As the dancers move through the space, digital interpretations of their brain waves are projected onto the surrounding area, creating a constantly changing, immersive environment.
Megacorp. Corporate showreel, 2015, © KairUs. (Used with Permission.)
Working under the name KairUs Art collective, Andreas Zingerle and Linda Kronman created Megacorp. Inspired by representations of evil corporate structures in science fiction, their invented super-conglomerate is the embodiment of all contemporary internet business scams. Working with a database of real information, tracking 1,000 fake web businesses, KairUS Art Collective translated the data into visual forms such as bar graphs and pie charts, demonstrating their corporation’s effectiveness. Their work addresses both real-world and invented effects of these fraudulent business practices.
References:
1. George Hersey, The Lost Meaning of Classical Architecture (Cambridge: MIT, 1988), 14.
Bio:
Christina Freeman is an interdisciplinary artist based in New York City. Her work takes on various forms including photography, video, artists’ books, multimedia installation, collaborative performance, and curatorial projects. She received her MFA in Studio Art from Hunter College, City University of New York in 2012 and her BA in Spanish and Latin American Studies from Haverford College in 2005. She has been invited to perform her participatory works as an artist-in-residence for SOMA in Mexico City, Heliopolis in Brooklyn, Galería Perdida in Michoacán, Mexico and the TEM market in Volos, Greece. She is a recipient of the Tuttle Fund, the Graf Travel Grant, the Pickett Fund Award and two grants from the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship at Haverford. Her 2012 solo exhibition at the Red House in Sofia, Bulgaria was featured on Bulgarian national radio and television. In 2015 she was awarded the CUNY PSC Grant to study at the Center for Book Arts in New York City. She is currently a 2016 Artist-in-Residence at Flux Factory in Queens, New York. Freeman is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Haverford College and has taught in the Department of Art & Art History at Hunter College since 2014. Freeman shows with Arcilesi Homberg Fine Art in New York.