Digital Arts MFA

Undercurrents: 2014 MFA Exhibition 

In Undercurrents, the 2014 Digital Arts & New Media (DANM) MFA Exhibition at University of California Santa Cruz, eleven emerging artists pushed back against prevailing ideas and definitions of digital art. The exhibition, held April 26-27 and May 1-4 at the Digital Arts Research Center (DARC), UCSC, connected themes of conservation, activism, and representation through a variety of media forms and presentations.

 

 

As part of the MFA show, I exhibited work from my Suspended Motion Series exploring the visualization of motion in the form of an interactive video installation as well as a series of prints. Suspended Motion Series III: Descending is the third video in a collection of work paying homage to early 20th century artists and technicians who, during a time of accelerated technological development, sought to represent movement in response to new understandings of human perception. This installation attempted to recreate Marcel Duchamp’s 1912 painting Nude Descending a Staircase in a contemporary context. The projected figure remains in an infinite state of descent, and the speed of her descent as well as the hue of the image is affected by the presence and level of movement of viewers in front of the screen. Music by sound artist Justin Zupnick.

The second part of my MFA presentation was an installation of 14 prints in the second floor hallway of the DARC, arranged in groups by Series I, II, and III videos. The prints on metallic proof film are derived from the Suspended Motion Series II video. The long scroll-like works use the same video frames incorporated in the prints they flank from both sides, but the video frames have been arranged to resemble an anthropomorphic shape and reference traditional Eastern scroll paintings. The grouping of four prints on the far right of the wall were developed from footage for Suspended Motion Series III: Descending.