Embodiments
April 26, 2024
Embodiments
April 26, 2024
A collection of the seminal exhibition research projects of the graduating students of the Digital Art & New Media program at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Above: Rose Klein’s Games of the Oppressed.
Background: Rory Willats’ Come, Fur(r)ies, Dance.
Above: Forest Reid’s THE LAST GALACIAN SWITCHBOARD.
Background: Laura Boutros’ AMDUAT: THE 12 HOURS OF RA.
The UC Santa Cruz Digital Arts and New Media (DANM) MFA program presents unforgetting the culminating exhibition of the 2022 MFA cohort. Five artists, Mohamadreza Babaee, Laura Boutros, Dave Crellin, Forest Reid and dani wright present new works of media art in the form of installations, games, experimental theater, video and site-specific installation, curated by Yolande Harris.
Above: Erin Single’s DUST WARNING.
Background: Patrick Stefaniak’s CLOTH^3.
Above: Evie Chang’s Buddytale.
Background: Marjan Khatibi’s Virtual Empowerment.
Virtual Empowerment is an immersive experience and visual narrative in the form of sociopolitical fiction. The project is designed to inhabit both virtual and physical spaces.
Buddytale is a game exploring our attachments to virtual pets and the nature of our relationships to them. The game invites players pick out and care for their own virtual buddy and play through snapshots of their life together: their first meeting, picking out a toy at the pet shop, comforting them during a particularly bad storm, and so on, until they must say goodbye.
The Digital Arts and New Media (DANM) program presents Receivership, its 2019 MFA Thesis Exhibition. The exhibition represents the culmination of two years of intensive study and creative work, encompassing a range of artistic practices and approaches to the use and examination of new media. The Digital Art/New Media MFA program of UC Santa Cruz brings together the arts, digital technologies, the humanities, and the sciences to produce artworks and scholarly research that together examine culture, society, and the digital world.
Above: Richard Grillotti’s Resonant Waves: Immersed in Geometry.
Background: Shimul Chowdhury’s Stiching Solidarity.
Background: Carinne Knight’s Presence Interference.
The 2018 DANM MFA exhibition represents the culmination of two years of intensive study and creative work, encompassing a range of artistic practices and approaches to the use and examination of new media. The exhibition’s title, Interstices, alludes pointedly to the historical moment and conditions that have shaped their work and lives. Meaning “an intervening space” and “an interval between things, parts, or times,” Interstices signals the artists’ conviction that this a time of transition and seeking, a time to find the cracks in current reality, to see beyond it and break through to a new space. Their work testifies to the belief that art can and should help change the world.
The 2017 graduates from the Digital Arts and New Media (DANM) MFA Program are presenting their work in the exhibition, ultraSHIFT. The DANM MFA Program serves as a center for the development and study of digital media and the cultures that they have helped create. Faculty and students are drawn from a variety of backgrounds, such as the arts, computer engineering, humanities, the sciences, and social sciences, to pursue interdisciplinary artistic and scholarly research and production in the context of a broad examination of digital arts and cultures.
Above: Scott Tooby’s Embedded Soundscaping.
Background: Marguerite Kalhor’s the this: artifice + superfice: two scoops of banality.
Background: David Harris’ Edges of Color.
The 2016 graduates from the Digital Arts and New Media (DANM) MFA Program are presenting their work in the exhibition, Blind Spot. Thirteen artists are creating and iterating within realms not easily decipherable and detected in the conventional art world. Each artist has worked in the critical spaces of game design, performance, post cinematic space, scientific theory, economic systems, or interactive media to resist and expand long-established, canonical meanings of art.
Alchemy can be defined as “a seemingly magical process of transformation, creation, or combination.” This same definition could be used to describe the artist process, and speaks to science, discovery, and the unattainable. This year’s works include sculptural installations, interactive documentary, playable digital media experiences, and even the recreation of a 1940’s shantyboat. In New Alchemy, transformation is at the core of the artists’ work, and is core to their personal journeys during their two years as graduate students.
Above: Steve Gerlach’s Topological Projections.
Background: Nathan Ober’s Orbits.
Background: Holly Findlater’s Rendering O(H)M.
Eleven emerging artists push back against prevailing ideas and definitions of digital art. Undercurrents of information and meaning run through the exhibition, connecting themes of conservation, activism, and representation.
The artists invite the viewer to redefine the meanings of “digital arts” and “new media” through hybridized video installations, interactive experiences, and improvisational performances that examine the social impact of new media on our lives.
Above: Catalina Giraldo’s Verde Oscuro.
Background: Laura Wright’s Radidio.
Background: james b. pollack’s be there.
Entitled, I’VE GOT SOMETHING ON YOUR MIND. presents the work of eleven MFA candidates who employ advanced technologies for creative potential. Through storytelling about places, times and players, these artists experiment with digital media to produce unforeseen, imaginative outcomes.