Artists
DEEP DATA
(the elevator)
Deep Data (2020) was originally conceived for a competition on the theme of “mutual aid,” a phrase first popularized by anarchist writer Peter Kropotkin, who argued that “cooperation, not competition, was the driving mechanism behind evolution, through biological mutualism."
Within the contexts of the Covid pandemic and “disaster capitalism” (the practice of taking financial advantage of natural or man-made disasters), we saw that the idea of “mutual aid” was coopted into a calculable and profitable concept, to support such financial concepts as “social capital.”
Meanwhile, the phrase “deep data” was first invented by the financial service industry during the 1980’s in connection with the FICO score. The FICO score was originally created to determine the credit-worthiness of a potential borrower, but today it constitutes the principal example upon which a global credit movement is built.
Within this movement, “deep data” refers to the idea of a small number of information-rich data streams that have the capability to yield greater business values at a lower cost. As such, deep data helps the credit industry to determine who can access certain life essentials such as water, food, health care, and energy. Private and public institutions both use deep data to create algorithms and procure what they call “customized customer engagement.”
Deep Data (The Elevator) exposes the pathological expansion of contemporary capitalist discourse. This installation invites you to step out of this competitive and often exploitive financial conceptand step into an analog world of miscellaneous deep data. You can interact with it by using a 12,000-year-old technology called farming. To honor true mutual aid, pick a seed, plant, grow, and share its fruits.
1821: AQUATIC PATHWAYS
Since 2008, Ndebele Dolls and Egyptian Paddle Dolls have dominated my art practice. African Dolls function as a bridge to contemporary artmaking as a tool for me to decolonize myself. Ndebele Dolls yield knowledge about living in a society that is decolonized during contemporary times, while Egyptian Paddle Dolls offer knowledge about precolonial Nubian society.
“African Dolls have stimulated my genetic memory. Genetic memory is a theorized phenomenon which argues that memories present at birth and without any associated sensory experience can be inherited.
African Americans, including myself, do not know where we come from. It is a significant issue in our maturation. But there is a genetic transfer via ancestral memories which manifest and can be seen in the similarities of Africans and African Americans. Although colonialism is a large factor in this scenario, it is critical to examine the past, present, and to reimagine the future to determine truth and freedom.
Part of my new series is about the “Saltwater Railroad.” The “Saltwater Railroad” refers to the coastal waterway followed by many enslaved people escaping from the Southern slave states into the British-controlled Bahamas. Going deep into my roots, I have learned I am a descendant of African Slaves and Black Seminoles. My family was one of the few black families living in Miami that was not from the Bahamas.
I believe that at this time in our history, we must access our ancestral memories, and shift our paradigm of consciousness to honestly consider diversity and humanity on a different level. CW
THE ARTIST IS NOT
a sound experiment in being
Elevators are social spaces. When we use an elevator for brief moments, we share this space with strangers coming and going in their day to day lives or alone. When you step into an elevator, you become acutely aware of your surroundings, those with you on the short ride up or down, the way your body fills the space, and awkward attempts to cut the silence.
In earlier days, elevators operators ushered people to their destinations. These lift operators could make the ride more pleasant with small talk, helping you forget the confinement you’re experiencing. Later, when we took charge of elevators ourselves, MUZAK was introduced to fill the space with comforting sounds and distractions. Today, some elevators have video monitors to keep you entertained on your short journey.
These notions, the sense of being you experience in an elevator, the sense of your physical self, and audio sounds meant to soothe, formed the basis for my exploration of being present.
Of course, Marina Abramovic may have mastered the idea of being present with her own performance piece, but she didn’t do it in a freight elevator. She asked a select few to be with her in an institutional setting and with an audience no less. The artist is not is decidedly about each of you, individually, and is best experienced alone.
To create the sound pieces, many one-minute recordings were made over the course of six months. I chose one minute because it is possible to make it to the 124th floor in an elevator in the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, in around that amount of time (barring any stops). These one-minute recordings were compiled into 10-minute compositions that are thematic in nature.
One minute does not seem a long amount of time—until you sit recording for that duration or sit listening for that long. Over the past six months, I drew conclusions from my own attempts at being in a world of distractions—social media being the worst offender: I had found myself in a continual state of distraction or disruption, less likely to focus on one thing at a time. And recognized that intent and discipline are required to regain our sense of being in the world and to find peace and also purpose to change things for ourselves and others.
UPLIFT
This site-specific installation in the elevator, is the latest incarnation of my ongoing project, DYSFUNCTIONAL BEAUTY. In this project, I collect discarded materials from my work at VisArts and other art centers that are deemed worthless, useless, and ugly. I breathe new life and meaning into these objects by arranging and displaying them in ways that give them new importance and force people to interact with them and to pay attention.
This conceptual project aims to spotlight mental health, destigmatize mental health issues, and to promote positive mental health. By transforming discarded materials into objects of importance, I challenge perceptions and inspire change. Viewers engage in a small performance art piece by interacting with the installation; each time an item is touched, picked up, and moved, a wish or prayer is sent to someone suffering from mental health issues.
Photo credit: Brian English
THE INTERPRETERS
History is not stagnant and still. It moves and shifts with every decade...I started to wonder who had written the words etched into these historical memorials. Whose truth did they describe? My art practice centers on the appropriation of history and the production and consumption of myth. I address issues of memory, identity, patriotism, colonialism, and climate change.
Photo credit: Greta Pratt
D.Y.Y.O. (DO YOU YOUNG ONE)
This image dives into the portrayal of black men in the United States as faceless, feared, and chained. This piece is a portrait of Artist Dyyo (Do You Young One) for his album “People Are Scared,” created in collaboration with artist and longtime friend, Taryn Harris.
Photo credit: Othello Banaci
DUCHAMP DESCENDING A STAIR
A wood and steel staircase in the elevator–with a twist.
Wood, steel, paint
Dimensions variable
Photo credit: Roger Cutler
POLLINATION
This artwork responds to faces and spoken words.
Its camera recognizes faces and splays them into rotating flower-like shapes; a central microphone listens for speech and shows its transcripts on a multitude of small screens.
In this work, I am analogizing the data that we spread when interacting in life to pollen: millions of invisible particles flowing in all directions with uncontrollable effects.
Nothing is uploaded. “Pollination” uses “whisper.cpp,” a neural network (“AI”) speech transcription tool, to transcribe audio entirely within the device. Its facial recognition is powered by OpenCV.
Neither technology is perfect; the same is true of other real-world applications. What happens if a real-time transcript of audio captured in a public place mishears your discussion of a broken ice maker as the name of a terrorist group? Or if a CCTV’s live facial recognition security product misidentifies you?
Photo credit: Chris Combs
FLEETING MESSENGERS
They keep disappearing from the skies, year by year. Does it matter if the skies are empty of this life force? Why do birds matter in our lives?
I believe humans need a connection to wildlife. As urban dwellers, the most immediate link is avian. Birds are all around us, in the trees, rustling in the bushes just outside our doorsteps and swooping through the city skies. Their existence so closely entwined with ours, offers us an intimate view into the lives of another species. They inspire wonder, curiosity, a respite from daily concerns, and kindle a much needed connection for our well-being.
Birds are living dinosaurs that still exist on every corner of the earth. They connect the sky and earth. They connect us to the natural world.
Three billion birds (150 species) in just the last 50 years have vanished from North America alone. Yet, beyond their vulnerability, birds possess an astonishing resilience that allows them to navigate through adversity and adapt to ever-changing conditions.
In this installation I use wire mesh to make hollow bird forms, which gives a translucent effect, leaving a ghost-like image. In another iteration, clay birds are wrapped in strips of drawings, mummy-like, and lay piled on the floor.
Birds’ ability to migrate over expansive distances is awe-inspiring and reminds us of the vastness and interconnectedness of our planet. When birds vanish, it feels as if a part of our world has been lost.
Photo credit: Greg Staley
WILL YOU REMEMBER THIS
An immersive installation
Moments in time…what are we doing each moment, how do these moments hold us together, keep us connected, or keep us apart…each action we take leads to another; each action we take is another moment.
This installation has grown over the years; it has taken many shapes and served many purposes. The essence remains while its presence expands and evolves. Each piece is a moment in time joined to another moment in time.
Step inside, experience the moment and you become part of the piece. Will you remember this?
Photo credit: Julia Bloom
TRADING / POST
Mixed media & video
In a post-industrial age, we are trading in ideas as much as materials. As individuals, we make choices about the places we occupy. I capture our presence in this world, make what might be hidden or peripheral, tangible. I focus on the footprints that mark the spots of our movements. Our actions leave traces; we write our stories on the landscape.
Photo credit: Ira Tattelman
WHEN WE ARE THEY ARE US
For this work, women created each strand of “When We Are They Are Us” from a variety of materials to represent a woman’s fertility. These teenagers, young women, middle-aged mothers, and grandmothers offered their time, effort, and thoughts about their bodies and their choices. Crochet was chosen as the fiber technique for this piece because of its universality and way of connecting women across generations. Just as many of us know someone who has crocheted, we also know someone who has experienced a challenging choice related to their fecundity.
One in four women under the age of 45 in the United States have had an abortion. This choice is part of our world and our lives, despite the desires of some to regulate, criminalize and deny its existence. Regardless of our individual thoughts and beliefs, we must stand together to support all women with the hope that the breadth of choices will continue to exist when we are they are us.
Photo credit: Pete Duvall
SYMBIONT
SYMBIONT is a meditative, immersive, interactive installation comprising audio-reactive and sensor-driven real-time generative video, pulse-sensors and fiber-optic wire where a main participant’s heartbeat is seen and felt by other participants.
Photo credit; Jackie Hoysted
SOMETHING OF THREE
Dawn Whitmore’s SOMETHING OF THREE is an immersive video and sculpture installation that explores the relationship between myth, reality and the journey that connects the two. In a projected video, reflection on animal migration inspires the artist to traverse an imaginary course in a desert landscape. Scored by Michael Benish.
Photo credit: Dawn Whitmore
TARGET WIDE OPEN
Using skills that her grandmother taught her, Gloria made a quilt of Target bags to create Target Baby. “When I created Target Baby, I was thinking of mass violence, innocent people as victims, children as victims, children as perpetrators, and also broader issues like consumerism, class divides, and gender roles. The target symbol is freighted with multiple meanings readily recognizable to everyone. Target Baby is evocative of a lot that is going on right now both in the US and internationally. Sad and ghoulish and red, Target Baby is a dismembered Raggedy Ann doll on a quilt.”
Photo credit: Julia Bloom
Līnea X - version 2
2020
Beeswax
Dimensions variable
Description:
Approximately 150 cast beeswax elements, each 29” inches in length, placed in two rows receding away from the front of the elevator, as close to each other as the width of each element, in a space 85” inches deep x 75” inches wide x 95” inches high.
Photo credit: Mary Early
Līnea X - version 1
2020
Beeswax
Dimensions variable
Description:
Approximately 150 cast beeswax elements, each 29” inches in length, placed in two rows receding away from the front of the elevator, as close to each other as the width of each element, in a space 85” inches deep x 75” inches wide x 95” inches high.
Photo credit: Mary Early
welter/wallow
Frank McCauley's welter/wallow explores a fascination with the relationships between private and public, reality and fiction, and the dynamic interplay between the individual and structures or masses.
Taking the figure as subject, it is put through a process in which its features are distorted, suppressed, or intensified in the service of expressing something beneath or behind the observable surface–that is, something that is best implied in the slippage between the recognizable and what is unexplained or mysterious.
Photo credit: Frank McCauley
PAGES FROM THE BOOK OF BABEL
PAGES FROM THE BOOK OF BABEL is a fifteen-foot scroll on semi-transparent Duralar, combining drawing, relief printing, gilding, and letterpress. The work is inspired by three sources. The first is the story of the fall of the Tower of Babel. The second is illuminated manuscripts used in medieval writings. The final inspiration is my love of typography.
The installation’s title and theme refer to the biblical story about mankind collectively attempting to build a tower high enough to reach heaven. Mankind’s hubris angered God, who scattered mankind across the world and “confounded” their common language so that they could no longer understand each other.
The story remains relevant in today’s world of confounded signs, symbols, and languages. It asks questions like, why does it matter that we have different languages and cultures? Is it possible to overcome our differences? Are we doomed to polarization and isolation as a result of our cultural and linguistic differences?
This installation is a response to these and other questions. The work combines images and techniques borrowed from antiquity with contemporary symbols and imagery such as computer shortcuts and Japanese anime. Instead of bricks and mortar, Pages from the Book of Babel was constructed using the elements of communication.
Photo credit: Michele Montalbano
FLOATING LIGHT
Diane Szczepaniak’s FLOATING LIGHT Two sheets of clear Lexan rectangles hang suspended on either side of a rod, which is balanced on a central fulcrum. As the surrounding air moves, the sheets twist, continually finding balance. As light hits the edges and reflects off their surface, the sheets appear to float. The space is never seen the same way twice. This freestanding sculpture is transformed by the space it occupies. The sheets move in response to circumstances in their environment.
Driven by the study of form, one could say the subject matter of my sculptures is form itself, an attempt to capture the essence of objects in space. I study how space is altered in nature, and in turn how nature is altered by its surroundings. It is a slow practice that gives me insight into how objects meaningfully acquire their own fullness of being–to have form–to have stillness in motion and motion in stillness.
Photo credit: Julia Bloom