science – Digital Arts and New Media MFA Exhibition

Kathleen Deck

Enviro-Envision

Enviro-Envision is an interactive installation that reflects research about the complex interactions that happen within the Santa Cruz coastal redwood ecosystem. In non- linear narrative form, it reveals the effects and consequences of human-induced climate change on local environments.

Kathleen Deck‘s work offers contemplations on science, art, the environment, and climate change. Through her artistic research practice, she challenges viewers to become actively engaged and educated in environmental issues, with the hope that an informed public can help forge a more sustainable society.

Photo Credit: Allison Garcia

Ann Altstatt

A Crystalline Quilt for the Thick Present

A Crystalline Quilt for the Thick Present is a multimedia installation centered on a sculptural assemblage of materials salvaged from the Dimeo Lane landfill in Santa Cruz. Through the formal metaphors of a crystal lattice and textile quilt, this work uses the landfill site as a case-study in the layered, entangled, superimposed nature of time, and proposes the ordering and reordering of matter as a record of these complex temporalities. A Crystalline Quilt invites the viewer to join and be implicated in this investigation by exploring the installation through a media-rich virtual interface that reveals the material histories of found objects.

Ann Altstatt is an interdisciplinary artist whose work focuses on geologic and non-linear time, the intersections of scientific inquiry and mysticism, and the hidden stories of everyday objects. Ann lives in the historic floodplain of the San Lorenzo river with her partner, their young daughter, a cat, a dog, five chickens and innumerable termites.

SL Benz

Auratic Interpreter

The desire for a holistic interpreter, or to be an objective empath, is a desire to move beyond ironic detachment, habitual consumerism, scientific reductionism and religious naivety. It reflects a desire for grounding the being phenomenologically, with one’s possessions as part of the politics of self. Benz’ installation is an attempt at mediating invisible knowledge, however anecdotal or trivial, revealing the multiplicities of possible narrative. Part divination, part polygraph technology, this machine reads the aura of inanimate objects and translates it to a visual record. This piece anticipates the need for increased data/memory retrieval in a post-material future.

SL Benz is an animation artist and experimental filmmaker working in hybrid media forms.Their work explores the interplay of memory, mediation, and political theology. By re-engaging with the supernatural and the ghosts of material forms, Benz’ work examines our relationships with culture.

https://vimeo.com/slbenz

Scott Tooby

Embedded Soundscaping

Embedded Soundscaping is an interactive sound installation exploring how audio-reactive technology can be applied in creative and scientific contexts to enable deeper understanding and connection to the world through sound. Through the combination of machine listening and embeddable computing, the installation features the Sonic Mirror, a new electronic instrument that selectively records and transforms the sounds of its environment into musical soundscapes.

Additionally, the instrument audifies the movements of an experimental robot made by engineering researchers at UC Santa Cruz to reveal the physical dynamics of digital materials – a new material technology developed by NASA’s Ames Research Center.

Scott Tooby is a sound artist and musician making electronic instruments and art that integrates machine listening and embeddable computing. After obtaining a BA in music composition from UCSB, Tooby moved to Los Angeles and acquired skills in electronics and sound design while working in the entertainment industry. He now lives in Northern California.

scott-tooby.com

Adrian Phillips

No Frontier

The frontier fantasy is a notion that has enabled the destruction and subjugation of native peoples, providing a romantic justification for colonial and imperial dogmas. No Frontier addresses these notions of frontier fantasies through a digital game for two players in which one player takes the role of a native population, while the other takes the role of a newly-arrived foreigner. Throughout the course of play, both players must come to terms with the colonial situation in which they find themselves, and discuss and negotiate what is ultimately a complex, ever-changing issue.

Adrian Phillips is a digital media artist and game designer whose work explores the use of procedural rhetoric and the creation of emergent gameplay narratives. He studies the ways in which these methods create meaning within playable media. He is currently pursuing an MFA in the Digital Arts and New Media program at UC Santa Cruz, with an emphasis in Playable Media. He completed his undergraduate education at UC San Diego with a major in Interdisciplinary Computing in the Arts and a minor in Computer Science. Visit Adrian’s website at

http://adrianmphillips.com

David Harris

Edges of Color

Edges of Color is a series of individually programmed pieces on an 8’ square, 16×16 grid of separately controlled and colored LEDs swatches. Reminiscent of the color swatch paintings of Gerhard Richter or the spot paintings of Damian Hirst, it treats light as the material for display instead of paint. The pieces shown in the color pixel array explore the boundaries of what is possible in a rule-bound, constrained system, reflecting and criticizing notions of creativity, innovation, and conformism as they exist in Silicon Valley culture and the processes of science and technology today.

David Harris is an artist, designer, journalist, and physicist based in Silicon Valley, California. His work spans a variety of media from the digital screen to immersive sculptural installations, with interactive objects in between. His art speaks to the inherent conservatism of the scientific process. Pieces of his art have been shown at the California Academy of Sciences, Maker Faire Bay Area, Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, and featured in Make magazine. His journalism has appeared in Scientific American, Popular Science, Nature, New Scientist, and many other international magazines. Visit David’s website at http://www.sciartica.net/