 I like working at the intersection of art and technology because it feels so relevant. Art always feels relevant to me, I think, but technology is really difficult, but we have to deal with it all the time. And I guess when I talk about one, they kind of relate to the other, so I feel like art is the same way. It's really difficult, but so important. We're going to talk tonight about personal relationships or intimacy in a digital world. And what do we mean when we say the digital world? Well, first of all, it runs pretty much everything in our lives. We're intimately involved with it. It is the 7,000 pieces of data that Facebook holds on us someplace in some dark box. It's the interferences that Gmail makes in our daily lives, recording data. It's all the programs that underlay the sewer system and the city lights everywhere. It's our sleep apps. It's how we consume politics and history and culture. So, yeah, it is ubiquitous. And despite this, all this personalized data and convenience, we want to know does this make us actually closer to one another or does it drive us apart? And so these are all these questions. We're not going to answer all of them tonight, but we're going to cover three parts of them, basically, how we relate to ourselves through this digital interface, how we relate to others, and then also how we relate to nature. And since the other artists have already been introduced, I'm going to get right to the questions. This is how it's sort of going to work this evening is that we're each going to describe a bit about the art that we do. And people will be allowed to perhaps ask questions during that, but also at the end. And I will pepper them with sort of general questions that will interrupt their flow as they go along. Much like the internet. Much like the internet. So the first person who is going to talk is Keaton, Keaton Fox. And, you know, one of the things that I like about your work is it's so sort of average and like quotidian and not special, and yet you take these little sort of moments and you make resonances with them that just sort of move outward. And so they become special in this way. And so Keaton is a multidisciplinary artist. She's an educator and a curator. And she is the assistant director at Boston Cyber Arts, which puts her in a good position to understand a great deal about this subject. She's exhibited nationally and internationally, physically and on the web. And she creates visual experiments that explore playfully the varied realities of our time. And she's especially interested in those that are frustrating. So I'm going to start by asking you to just begin your presentation and talk about some of these projects. Okay. Sounds good. So my name is Keaton Fox and I'm here today to talk about how technology has changed the way that humans interact with one another. And I'm going to show you that by looking at three different projects that I've created over the past six years, I would say. So yes, I'm a multidisciplinary artist, educator, curator, all these different things. And I also have a lot of ways that I work with media, just like I have a lot of different titles. So the works that we're going to look at today are there's one installation piece, one video art piece and one painting project. So let's just get right into it. Oh, this is my art of opposition. So because my work is so varied, there's one, I wanted to talk about this one idea that really holds them all together. And it's the art of opposition. And it's this idea where I find things that are opposing ideas and put them together. And I think that's the most interesting way to learn about anything in this world is to figure out what one side thinks and then the other side and put those together. And that's how I make my decisions in my everyday. And it's also how I create my art projects. So some of these themes look like natural and virtual, academic and accessible, which goes along with art and tech as well. I think the art world and the tech world can be really come off as pretentious and not accessible to everyone. And so for my work, my personal work at Cyber Arts and every aspect of my life, I'm trying to make it so that everyone feels like they can have these conversations like we're having now because we're all going through it. And so my work reaches tries to do that by being silly and significant at the same time and bringing together individuals or individual moments with communities. I think also with technology, we are on our phones a lot by ourselves in our rooms. And so I think it's important to use technology to bring people outside and together. So the first project we're going to look at is from almost six years ago. It's called EmoTinderCon. I really like playing with words. So this was a fun title for me because we have Emo, short for emotional, Tinder, popular dating application, emoticon, a digital icon or sequence of keyboard symbols that serves to represent a facial expression and con, which is an instance of deceiving or tricking someone. Con will come back in the next project. So this is what it looked like, but essentially it was 2014. Tinder was relatively new and emojis are relatively new. And so we were in this really interesting place where I remember people were still really didn't know what to think about Tinder. And we have these moments where a new application comes out and we question it. And then I feel like these moments last for a really small amount of time and then we stop questioning it. Much like Uber or Lyft, I remember when that first came out, I thought I would never get into a car with a stranger and now I use these applications all the time. So I wanted to create something in this moment where people were thinking about meeting up with a stranger and how creepy that could be or how exciting it could be. So I just graduated from college. I was minoring in anthropology and I was also thinking about how Tinder could be this really kind of warped but interesting way to get a case study and see what different people were thinking about something at a given time. Obviously this is flawed and would not be used for actual research but for art and for fun. So I knew I wanted to ask some kind of question or do something with this kind of group sample, but I didn't know what it was. So then I looked to emojis which had blown up. People were using them all the time to communicate, but we were using them in this way where we were using them with words. So it was kind of this luxury where you're using words to communicate something and then you have this symbol that either strengthens what you're trying to say or maybe makes it more nonsensical. Do you think we are going to move to hieroglyphs again? So that was kind of the impetus of the project was I was looking at hieroglyphs and seeing how this came full circle in such a fascinating way and was wondering whether, because people were using them so much, wondering whether we would go to that and just only use images in the future or use images more than words. And do you have like I do, like I'm sure we all do, do you have a list of the emojis that are missing? Castanets. Yes, and I have another full project that goes through that because it does get really political because it's like a language and if you don't see yourself and you can't explain what you're trying to communicate with the set that's there then that can cause some real issues. So that's what I wanted to explore exactly and see, okay, the good and bad parts of this. If we only were using images to communicate, that would make a more universal language, which is interesting. But then what kind of conversations can you have with only 270 characters? So this all came together in the form of an installation. It was really simple, really DIY. We had a projector and it was set up to this iPad and you could only use emojis to communicate. At that time I'd set it to only male because I didn't know how queer I was at that point. So all of these are just men, but we'll go through and you'll see if you go to the next slide. So if you go back one, yeah, you can see how different people responded, but then there was this really special moment with Christopher. And so he said also on my Tinder profile, I didn't have any pictures of my face, so I had a mask on. So he said I'm going to assume all those are what's going on behind the mask, random emojis. I'm going to assume these are all emojis because I have a really shitty Android, blockety block, lickety blick. So then I don't have a lot of time, so we're going to kind of go through this, but he just starts talking about all the hot topics of the time. So we have Ukrainians in the UN. He goes into net neutrality. If you go to the next one talking about Warner and Comcast, Jesus, slow down. I don't mean to offend you, babe. So who are we talking to online anyway? Exactly. And you can see kind of gradually as it goes on after the Time Warner Comcast. If you go back one, thank you. You can see, I say, okay, round of applause, like this is pretty funny. And then if you go on to the next one, just keeps talking about all this stuff and basically is talking to himself. And then you have this hard eyes and then these emojis that really expressed how I was feeling at the time. Because it was like I literally will not allow myself to communicate with this person because I have to stick with the project. So then he keeps going on. And then we started talking on August 9th. And then nine months later, he got a new phone on March 9th and said, So I got a new phone where I can actually see the emojis and you totally thought I was charming. That was just one outcome of this project. But it really gets into these core concepts of, Okay, if he hadn't updated his phone, what would have happened? And then you think about that in the larger scheme of things. If people don't have these updates, can I communicate with them with emojis? No. Okay, well, what if they can't get Tinder because they don't have an iPhone? Okay, well, then I might never meet them. And then you go in these different routes and you're like, Okay, if I meet someone on Tinder and what if we get married and what if we have kids and what if we have a whole family? Of emojis. Or what if the perfect person for you doesn't have an iPhone and you can't meet them online and then your life takes a completely different course? And then we can talk about like free will and fate and all this stuff. But this was a fun little project that again is silly and significant in different ways and looks at how it can be, how we can communicate in funny ways with tech. Great. So we can go next. So we're going to buzz very quickly through the next two things. Yes. But as a kind of like, you know, a misgul right now, I want to ask all of you, what is the best part about working at the intersection of art and technology? I'll let one of you answer that first. I like working at the intersection of art and technology because it feels so relevant. Art always feels relevant to me, I think, but technology is really difficult, but we have to deal with it all the time. And I guess when I talk about one, they kind of relate to the other. So I feel like art is the same way. It's really difficult, but so important. And I feel like the art that I make becomes more relevant when I use technology because it brings it into the present moment. What about you, Lani? Yeah, I like using technology because it's one of those things that like, we have it in the palm of our hand, like we all have access to it. And it's one of those things where I like being conscious of it in my work, but also challenging the approach so it's accessible. I try to always make it accessible in some way and just the way of like presenting of it. But I also like to complicate that. So I think there's something interesting in that. Is it even correct to ask whether about working with technology when it is so pervasive? It's not even a medium anymore. It is the entire surroundings that envelop us. But it's still new. It's still called new media. It's still called new media. I mean, technology itself is what, as old as humanity. But I think it's pretty exhausted, right? Because there's like the point where people just overwhelm, so they just like accept it. Like we accept like, you know. But many artists work with all kinds of different technologies, you know, that go way beyond the digital. They may work with, you know, like, I don't know, city systems or things that we don't actually, data that we don't actually see. You work with data we don't see. Yes. I think we all do, like even your Tinder stuff. Like, that's data, that's personal data that we're putting in a database and using in ways to connect to other people. Right. So yeah, I think we're still learning how to use it too. And that's why I think it's important to have it part of my heart. I think it's powerful too. It's powerful to use it to discuss and bring up conversations that are hard or difficult or maybe considered as like old school and old history. Okay, carry on now. All right. We'll go real fast. I love this one. Okay. So this one also has to do with Tinder. We like Tinder. Yeah. So we can just play it and then I'll talk over it. So fast forward a year, still making art, still weirdly using Tinder as my medium of choice. And such a good sound. So like I was saying before, my Tinder profile didn't have any pictures of me on it. So I was wearing a mask in one picture with a leotard. There was a picture of my hand in one. There was a picture of my art, a lot of pictures of my art, but never my face. And so essentially to make a long story short, one day I'm on Tinder and I get a notification that says that my account is going to be banned because it feels like spam, which was an insane feeling to me. And the more I thought about it, the more frustrated I got. And I thought, you know, who did someone say this? Or is this the AI tracking me down and saying that I'm not working with this well? Or who's telling me that I feel like spam won? And so then I started researching it more and found out that someone had flagged my account. And once I figured that out, it got really dark in my head because you're on this application and most people are using it to find someone that they will love or hook up with or what have you. So if you're getting flagged for putting yourself online the best way that you know how and the way that you want to and the way that you want to express yourself and you're getting told that that feels like spam, that's a really disgusting feeling, honestly. So then I started researching spam, the word where did it come from and then was thinking more about this can of spam and what that actually feels like. So you're actually collaborating with people in this unintentional way. Yeah, definitely. And so bringing it back to how we're communicating with humans and technology like the last project was a really cute way of looking at that and this is a really dark way of looking at it where people are rejecting who you are, who you want to be online and the fact that they can. And so this video just basically goes on and on about just... and the sound is really disgusting and it smelled really weird in the environment when I was doing this. But essentially the point of this piece is to talk about who can we be online if we can't be ourselves and all the things that happen behind this pane of glass that people wouldn't say that to me maybe in person but because they're behind this glass all they have to do is tap and then all these feelings of disgust and all these questions come about. And now you have something with lots of green swirls. Yes. So that's what it looked like when I was reported. It feels like spam in appropriate photos. Of your art. Of my art and my body and like my hand. So this is... I'll just read two sections of this. Someone wrote this about the piece and it said she did not display the female body. She did not display the female face. The latter was cause for concern. The latter was cause for warning. That's spam. The source of this undesirable sensation may even feel the way her body feels. This body pink, feminine, malleable, flaky, pungent, squishy and acquired taste. So there's more on that but you get the idea. Okay so the last one I'm going to talk about is green screen dreams. This one I worked on this year and last year. No Tinder involved. After that last project I said no more. So coming back to the human to human communications with technology this was a project that I started because I was sick of working alone which is what a lot of people who work with technology have to do. And art. And art. Both of them. So I went on a real lonely streak and decided that I wanted to collaborate with other people. At this time I was working as the education coordinator at Cambridge Community Television which is an amazing place. I can't say enough good things about it. But a really good place to come for creative people who are looking to express themselves through media. So I came up with this idea or this question and I asked 10 people that the day that I was at CCTV what would you paint if you could paint anything? And 9 out of 10 people responded and said I can't paint. And I thought that's so interesting that they they're not even going there in their mind but they're saying no I can't paint so I can't answer this question I can't even think about this question because I can't paint. So I've been doing a lot with green screening technology because I call it green screening technology no one calls it that because it's not new and flashy but I'm obsessed with it I think it's this phenomenal idea where one color can change the background or essentially the reality that you exist within. So I wanted to do something with green screening and so I went back to those same people and I said I want you to come in and I want you to paint this canvas green and then I'm going to interview you and talk about what if you could paint anything and really think about it all the painting abilities in the world what would you want to paint? So I had a couple different people I think there were eight in total this is them all posing with their art that they do not want to pose with. And so you can keep going. So you get all these really different designs and for me when I go into galleries and see paintings that are all one color this is what I feel like I'm like it's interesting it's cool but I need more of a backstory and but these were all fascinating to me because everyone had these different strokes and to me these were already art like done they already created these magical paintings but they didn't see it as that so I was thinking okay how can I use technology to have them see what I'm seeing and to have them understand that they can be painters and that they are painters and so you can go back one. So then I recorded them all talking about their dreams and made these videos where I took out the green paint and put in photos and videos of what they had sent me of anything they wanted to draw someone really wanted to draw aliens someone really wanted to draw warm beautiful places because she was sick of living in the cold it was winter time. So this is why you refer to your work as experiments? Yeah definitely and I think everything we do as humans is an experiment I don't think there's right or wrong I think we're all just trying to figure things out so I try to use that word a lot but the really cool part about this project was then they all came to the opening and we had one TV with all the videos playing but then we had the green paintings hung up in the gallery and so for all intents and purposes they were painters in this show and in the videos I was able to make it look like I painted the thing and that was cool to be able to change that reality but this was so interesting because we were changing reality because these people who thought they couldn't paint at all then had their paintings hung in a gallery and this is how you supplied a human connection Exactly. Yes cool. May we continue? Yes. Okay we're going to talk about Christina Bouch who is a multi-disciplinary artist and... We all are. We all are. and lives in Cambridge and has... I met her first at a show of selfies she's done she did when... and then she was looking like this and all of them this is very interesting what is this it was all like taken and all these pictures taken as she woke up every morning for a year and would you like to say a little bit more about what you do? Yes sure I'm an artist obviously a multi-disciplinary artist on this panel I also curate I will look at a couple shows I did this year at the Nave Gallery and I'm also a... I'm going to just highlight that a moment because they were two amazing shows with 43 different artists and she curated all of it they were fabulous shows I did not curate all of it well she had two you had two other people doing it I had two co-curators for the first show who made it a lot of fun and I'm also a digital producer in the marketing and technology space which has taken me from a traditional artist place of drawing and painting and pulled me into this art and technology world that we're talking about now so that's been interesting they layer in strange ways so I'm going to go backwards in time my extensions work is the latest series that I'm working on it's a way for me to externalize my own body in a way that my smart phone is I read a book about we were talking about archives before this and I was reading a book about digital archives and how that's changing changing the way we save things in archive work and people events and what not and I thought I want to be able to take control of that myself so what I started doing with this project is externalizing my own data so I just started doing this last year the data sets that I've been working with so far are my heartbeat I've done that one a lot it felt like a good place to start because that's life right if I don't have control of my own heartbeat what do I have control over and then I looked into my text messages too and just recently I've started exploring my medical records super exciting stuff because it's one of those things that we all have tons of data out there about ourselves but most people don't do much with it or they do very little with it but it's still out there being used all the time for other purposes for commercial purposes again I work in marketing and people use data all the time to try to sell you more shit so I wanted to take my data and visualize it so my heartbeat is it's also fun because it's such a it's such a recognizable sound and visual even though none of us really see our own hearts beat but we still know the sound and what it looks like so this is a 3D printed heart I made this at Artisans Asylum by the way so I made a 3D printed heart with the help of a member here and I also recorded my heartbeat and put it in this it was called a circuit playground I started working with electronics through this series which has been a lot of fun again starting it here at Artisans Asylum in the electronics department this piece was the first one I did it's called extension 01001 so I named them like I named my files so I wanted to be I really wanted to be a data set I know it doesn't look like that but I still wanted to feel that way so this one my heartbeat is in there as well it's that little circle in the middle but this one's more of a portrait too so I have my portrait on the smart phone in there and then that's my hair in the background it's actually a cyborg so it's human, machine and animal how do you decide whether to do stuff in the physical realm or the digital realm? that's a good question I tend to even for this project but in most of my art I tend to just start drawing and making stuff physically anyway but again I still want to move into that digital realm because it feels like it feels like it's where I should go even though it's not where I want to go well I have another question too data is only ever partial and it's only as good as whatever the analysis of it is or the tool used to collect it so how do you count for that in your portrayal using it? well what I like about using data in this way in a visual, artistic way is that it's okay for it to be so piecemeal and compartmentalized so I've taken my heartbeat and done different things with it it's not in a similar way but I feel the same way about our digital selves online so again in my marketing world we all have our personal brands right? that's a very common term now but we have it in different ways so we have the one for our friends and the one for our family and we don't want those two to cross so we keep them separate and then you have one for work on LinkedIn all these different profiles and versions of yourself online and I like to take my data and do that in a way with these extension pieces this is a little bit like Lynn Leeson and her three Robertas Lynn Hirschman Leeson? I love her work she did a series decades ago before this sort of technology was around where she created this alter ego called Roberta who had a credit card and a bank account and psychiatric records and Lynn went to separate psychiatrist and then more recently then she made a digital version of herself then she made Cyber Roberta which is a doll if you saw the ICA Boston show Art in the Age of the Internet it was there and you could you could move it you could go on your phone and control its head and it could watch people so yeah I love Lynn Hirschman Leeson's work and I like the way she portrays herself in different ways well that was actually a totally different character so I'm not doing that this is actually my own data and I tag it with my own name like it's mine but I like to I like to show the different facets so this is a digital piece that I did it's on a web page it's a drawing it started out as a drawing and then I coded it and I love that it still looks like a drawing and my heartbeat is still there in the middle this is a digital version of the physical sculpture that I made which I don't necessarily want to have physical and digital versions I like to have just digital versions too but I still like to have that human touch so it doesn't look so digital so I still have that drawing element in it you have a lot of data exposed and available to people now what do you feel about the privacy issues involving data I feel like privacy issues data privacy is a hot topic and I think it's a hot topic but only for people who really understand it and most people still don't care whatever as long as I get Tinder for free and Facebook for free they can have all my data but of course the more the layers are being pulled back we're seeing how they're actually using our data how we've agreed for them to use our data which is probably the scariest part and we're realizing wait a minute I think that's too far but they're like nope we're already going sorry we're just going to keep taking selling selling selling so I think it's something that again I'm trying to take more control over it and have more awareness of it by collecting my data which can be time consuming because it's not easy visualizing it visualizing it in a way that is something that I like which is a very vague statement but there's no real rules to the project except that I'm externalizing a piece of my own data and I've done some more work with text messages just kind of digging into my text message history and again drawing it because I don't love the way digital clean design lines is I still want it to be hand drawn so I'll do that a lot do you know Brian Cain's project where he's taken his digital database and inscribed it on granite I think we talked about that and all I could think in my head was where the hell is he going to store all that stuff because it's I think it's a project on one of the out islands in Boston or something like that yeah so I love that the idea of taking your digital data which is meant to be so compact easy to transport and send and then making it tangible and physical and heavy and completely unusable and unwieldy which is what most of it is anyway there's so much data about each of us out there and 95% of it is being used but it's out there and somebody could take it and use it at any time let's look at the next image with the with the nave show here so avatars stemmed from also stemmed from this idea of digital memory and our digital selves online and how we as artists represent ourselves in different ways so I curated two shows at the nave gallery just down the road and there were a lot of different artists in this show this is Rachel Chateau X-Ray Ames and Julia Cheko this the show I curated it with Juliana Funkhauser and Krista Wright who are in San Francisco it really opened my eyes to all the different ways that technology and the way we represent ourselves now in the age of technology it's really how varied it is so I mean there's Julia's piece here as Tom on a cell phone it's a video that's more of a obvious use of technology but then the work by X-Ray and Rachel I found a lot of ties to technology too that I wasn't expecting and I love that X-Ray's work X-Ray actually pierces a collaborators skin and there's a string connecting the physical structure with that person and then with X-Ray with them actually doing that work of tying and connecting and I really I don't know if it worked this way but I immediately thought it's so much like the internet where we're just constantly making these ties with ourselves and with other people and with other places and then Rachel's work is the kind of tree looking piece there this is in reference to historical past I won't get into it I think and then the second show was called Avatar's Futures and that was more technology, more new media as we call it although this is a giant painting here so it's that's by Tony Estone yes Tony Estone who's also in Somerville here and this was a big video and installation by Tom Marcel so this work is a way for me to learn from other artists how they represent themselves online and in this digital age and how they explore their own identity and kind of society's identity like how is our society changing which is part of Tony's work here where you see Avatar's you know a lot of it a lot of it was kind of post apocalyptic which I think is appropriate but it was a lot of fun to explore those topics with these 40 other very talented artists I have a question for Keaton which I then want you and you to answer and that is you worked a lot with the digitization of stuff files and so forth like that and how can you answer how that affects how we communicate with each other well I think at first impacts the way we remember things more than anything I think the way we archive everything and have everything accessible it makes our brains less quick to remember and so and then you also get into this situation where looking back on images or photographs change your original memory as well so I think in a connective way I think humans we are our memories and our relationships are memories also so when you're relying on this data it comes to the point where the data is what kind of defines the relationship and and it changes how you construe yourself and look at the relationship and your identity like if you I have a lot of people who with the text messages you can see all the photos that you've sent back and forth and it becomes this really interesting kind of woven imagery woven together of your conversations but then that also changes you know you don't see the arguments that you had with that or you don't see and pictures always are more positive normally than they are documenting the negative things so I think that translates to how we look at our relationships and ourselves also so now I want you to answer that question too the digitization of how that changes our data I think it's changed the way we the way we communicate the way we identify ourselves I think at first with the internet it was a way to explore these other identities and ways of being that we wouldn't normally feel comfortable doing in real life but now that the internet and social media and technology that technology has been around for a while it's starting to be regulated in a way like with your feels like spam where you can't do that now so I think it's it was this like place of freedom where you could do so much and now it's being pulled back so Keaton you talked about how it changes the past and our history Lanny you are really concerned with the past and history and how it's been changed I think it's interesting because I feel the opposite of that because the way I use files in the internet is like that's actually my first source of research about my own history like my family in Hawaii and being a Pacific Islander like what's our identity like how are we present a lot of times I don't see that we are and if there is information a lot of it's either misinformed or it's really edited in a certain way like what lens is being used so it's kind of interesting because there's a lot of access now like people people who didn't have access before can now have a voice so it's interesting to see now the different articles or different conversations that are being had right now in Monacoa right now there's the volcano versus the 30 millimeter telescope there's that hole just on Twitter alone there's a huge conversation going on which is really interesting that wasn't there before we're going to move back to that in a moment but we're going to move on to the next final piece of yours the last thing I want to show is just the Awake project that Jessa mentioned this was my first foray into digital practice I took a selfie in the morning right when I woke up for I actually did it for a few years and it's it was a way for me to see myself in a different way that I wouldn't have been able to do without the smart phone technology so I like that sometimes normally you wouldn't post photos of yourself looking so groggy and like swollen when you wake up and I found it was a really introspective way but publicly because I posted all of these to Instagram and a website so to be introspective and kind of get to know myself a little better and be comfortable with my my physical self but also to do it in a public way and these are digital files they're shown digitally but they're also shown physically I print them out and show them in gallery as well and then I started drawing emojis on them like this is what I felt like but this is what I looked like but this is what I really felt like so it's been a fun way to kind of I can keep playing with those images for a long time and I have been I've done a lot of experiments with these images and there's also a tradition now of using insufficient images in art that have you know do not subscribe to the perfection at all yeah and a lot of these are really grainy and low resolution because I take it right when I wake up so a lot of times you know it's not in focus and I don't see what I'm doing and that's part of the point as uncurated as possible and it was is Hito Steyerl influenced in this because of her? in this work yes I guess her most of her writing I think would be more influential she writes a lot about images online and how they keep getting repurposed and copied and pasted and cut and cropped and you know sent here and sent there the point where the image that most people see is totally different than the original image original image whatever that means because now images are digital and they're immediately you know messed with yeah so her writing on imagery and the sort of democratization of media and images through the internet was influential for this yeah cool yeah all right where can I go to Lani? Lani Asuncion so dear me where is my introductions start yourself with an introduction we'll catch up I am also a multimedia artist seems to be the hot commodity of our being I like to community organize, I organize things I like to bring people together have fun events on rooftops and Cambridge things like that sometimes I just pop up in a park and start making music or plants Do you have any hot rooftop events coming up? Good question! On Tuesday you all should come it will be fine yes please show up come through it's going to be a studio 550 so storytelling is at the heart of your practice? Sometimes yeah pretty much and you deal with experiences of loss and transformation those are big words that bring it together and belonging? How do we belong as who's a we and what is us because you're multicultural and biracial you pull all this into the picture as well I do and sometimes it's very multi-layered that's why I think media is a good platform because I can bring a lot of that conversation away where people can watch it totally bombarded and or intimidated and you use nature in your work actual and that word nature to me is so loaded so I kind of want to unpack that literally onto my lap so yeah I when I graduated from UConn I focused a lot in video and performance around fine arts of painting and sculpture and printmaking so I was really trying to figure out what is video and what does that mean to me when I was doing my thesis work I was thinking a lot about Andrew Tchaikovsky the Russian director I did Solaris and Mirror and Stalker and what was it to use video in a way where it was slow and what is western or eastern time literally what does that mean and how do we break that down in media so I had all these theories running around in my head and I was like well how do I actually do that in my work so I had my first residency in Troy at Contemporary Art Center and I had access to this whole church so if you go forward and you go and start playing the video next slide and so this video is called Bloodless and I was in a church and I was trying to figure out what do I do in this church it was creepy, it was dark it was awesome and I found a hibiscus plant and we can just turn them volume and so I basically kind of thought about what is the loaded imagery that I could communicate because all imagery has language and that's where the storytelling comes in and the hibiscus for me was something that was very loaded because there's one point my family's from Hawaii and I grew up on a sugar plantation the one that Dole started a long time ago in the 1980s that then eventually led to the annexation of Hawaii and I'll unpack that a little bit but I was really interested in how this one plant is kind of like symbolized the people associated with Hawaii and the actual state flower is a yellow hibiscus but it looks very similar to red one and it's actually very different it's not native and the other one is you're using these to unpack your cultural identity then yeah some people might understand that and some people might not which is fine they don't have to know all of it but I think the feeling still comes through and the complex conversation still comes through and a lot of my works I work in series like if it's installed and I work in installations I work in space so even if it's like a gallery it would still be like you'd walk into a garden or something that still has pieces like you see the different flowers and they all say something in this case I'm crashing the flower into my crotch and all those actions they all build up into a story that is a very painful a complex story one of the things I like about your work is that it's somewhat pedagogical but it uses this real time aspect to feel the changes happening you don't just understand them intellectually you feel them interiorly and that's why I love Tarkowski's work because he did a thing where it pissed people off they were like oh my god this is so long what the hell but there was something powerful and kind of commanding that attention kind of like real time what is real time like in video this is not real time because I'm cutting it in half and so that's how I was using the actual technical aspects of the video to create that tension that pain that existed within that story and that timeline so Bloodless was the quote-unquote war that happened right before Dole and his business partners and apparently the Boston Naval fleet that came over to kind of back them up the Queen at the time to step down Lydia Kamehameha to step down and it's just interesting to me just like how do I express all of that in imagery there's like connections within my own histories but how do I portray that in like two minutes or six minutes and a lot of this actually is pretty long because the actions are still happening but that's when I brought it into post and just started like literally cutting it up really aggressive and so it's really interesting to kind of experiment with that so this brings up one of those big questions like what is reality here how important is it which is I'm going to ask the rest of you how does digital working in the digital realm both create the reality of being human and also rip it apart you mentioned the part about looking at all those photographs the way of seeing only a small element of reality such that the rest might be forgotten you have a long timeline that includes everything seemingly sometimes yeah I think it's actually really important I had a professor once said you know Lon you use that weird sound that really weird stuff but a lot of it's just straight up like the trucks that were passing by behind me I did it right by the interstate and it was important to kind of have that real view or back into reality but also that kind of like industrial to like reference back to this kind of like hard truth of like the environment I think just the world right now feels very surreal and so I think working digitally is just a really easy way to match that feeling like any science article or there's new articles every day that make me feel like I'm in a weird dream world and I feel like you can if our reality is changing this much and if I don't know what reality means in the most normal understood version of reality then I can use that in my art to bring up these questions by shifting it you can move to the next one and this is that that was at Boston Cyber Arts that Keaton carried that was in body mass that was a really awesome show yeah that's cool that's good so on that note and Keaton really hit a good point that's what I realized was missing in the work the video work so I'm about to talk about that you're like you're still on it that's awesome we're like together on this so what I realized is my body was missing like I realized like I kept putting my body in I even created a character called Pineapple Girl which I did two years before I did that performance in the church privately and so the private performances had power and I was able to like portray that but the kind of need for cutting that need for like doing something more digitally kind of told me that there was something lacking and what that was was the immediate confrontation and or hopefully like communication and or interaction with the viewer so this was done at the MFA it was opening for a screening that was called Narcissus sister which is really awesome really great feminist artist she's all the things and I was really honored to be able to perform this kind of before a screening which I really liked that it was paired with like video again and also the video is very complex with the way it's like performative in its video and whatnot and this actually became really emotional for me and it was interesting because like how I can see all of you I couldn't see anybody because it was so bright the light and I usually had a live performer that would perform the music which I'll play in a little bit which is the song that the queen wrote later which became a very popular song in Hawaii and I deconstructed it so it was really interesting to actually like perform this and performs more every time I did it live I realized how more and more that power was kind of present but also how it opened it up for the complex level of the viewer and like there's an energy there's a transference there that I can't I can't actually have when it's just a video so this is in a way this is a method of collaboration as well yeah it might take a little bit of time we can let's just move forward so that's the original song you can look up the original song as you can see us on the interwebs I also performed this so I'll play the song that was actually played live by Piotr Sopensianski and he's right there on the right side and so we played it on a ukulele that was being played through a doom amp and it was being then deconstructed by creating a detuning every single loop so if we go ahead and play it right there you'll start to kind of hear the song and it's interesting because like in the first time that this was done digitally we did it live in a church at Hope Church in JP so there's something kind of interesting that happened with the song kind of resonating within a real church and projection mapping kind of like what I actually like had a digital image of the hibiscus that I was deconstructing physically tearing apart so what I usually do is I beat the hibiscus into my lap and then I tear it apart leaf by leaf and then flower by flower and then I replanted and it grows back again and the growing back part is something that I live with and the viewer itself they don't really get to see but there's time in that and I also deal with projections, live projections so I'm really interested in that how does the digital interact with the physical and you've also done other interesting things with sound like taking the growing cycle energy of a plant and pushing it through a MIDI thing to form yeah we can move to that human garden so the human garden so we can go right back really really quickly yeah we're going way too quick it's okay so I when I moved here two years ago almost two and a half years ago I walked by every day the landmark building in Fenway do you know that fancy park that's up right now with those really strange sculptures that I think geese really like a lot which I think is really interesting how the geese have taken over that park in a really kind of empowering way so I used to walk by when they would have the construction fence and it was like this fake and I would pull a piece off every time and stick it in my pocket or my bag and I was just kind of mad about how much like chemical waste was being kind of like brought into the sewer system and how much like it was just like awkward to walk around I actually communicated a few times with the people who were like the construction heads and I was like can I will you donate some of this fake plant to my project I was like I'd love to like you know kind of like interact with this what's happening here and they're just like oh like stop bothering and I was like it's going to take two years and I was like I can wait that long and they just like they never they just didn't really they didn't really they went on to that but it was really interesting to me just kind of watch this development you can play that and so I had a residency at Vermont Studio Center which is awesome because residencies allow you to kind of like get lost in your work and like kind of be disconnected from the real world for a little while but while I was there I started kind of playing around with the imagery of the landmark building and I wanted to kind of like do this kind of wonky I like dealing with technology where it's like one layer one base to another so I filmed myself on the projection and then played it back so I'm not actually on that wall but that's a like a video of me performing and then it's like a really wonky kind of after effects like animation of like you know growing in a very opposite way like more like a curtain than it is in actual growing so this actually kind of like started my whole exploration with like what does it mean to be connected to green spaces and how do corporations or how do people who have power and or access to land what is land ownership how do they construct these spaces how do they use them as ponds to create then like to have access to you know put up a whole block of office buildings instead of living spaces so there's a lot of politics involved and I feel like it's really tied to the things that were going on in Hawaii and blood list so to me the connections are there and so if you go forward a little bit I started doing this piece called human garden so that's what this is titled and I started doing also these workshops called biosounds so it's where I take a biosensor a midi sprout I'm using a very like basic one that I bought from the sky in Cambridge I picked it up in like a flea market I bought it off eBay it was really rad I was like man I love Boston I can just like get something somebody made at MIT I was like I don't have to buy it in Germany so I needed one for this workshop and I ended up doing a live performance in Ramler park which is like right next to where that development happened but this park has native plants and the volunteers who volunteer there have been volunteering for like five or eight years and the woman Frankie gave me a tour and she showed me all the different local plants and if you go there there's a little teeny piece of paper I should have put that up and it says it like maps all the native plants and it tells you about them and so it was really rad to like I just got a permit from the city and I like chucked out $150 and I got PAs and I asked my friend to come down my friend Sean from Philly and he we together performed with these plants so the biosensors connect to the plants and I'm connecting it to a synth and his sound system he had a little synth and we were basically taking the energy patterns from the plant and then turning that into music and now you do biosound workshops too yeah I did it the Boston Children's Museum and kids are like so rad they have a lot of patience and care for plants the only time I ever had to tell somebody like whoa be careful you're going to hurt the plant was like somebody's dad I was like dude you can't pull it like that you're going to like hurt it and so the sensors are like they're just EKG like sensors they're like sticky and so this is like a young person like messing with it there and can you say a little bit more about how this brings awareness to environmental issues yeah so the way that the sensors work is like conductivity so there's a negative and positive connection so it's really nice because I can tell people like young people their parents like all of us that there's energy and connectivity within plants and there's also that happens with us and there's a connection there and then if you move forward a little bit and there's also ways that we can control that and thinking maybe more about how how can we use technology to connect more with plants and how do we just in general connect to them so I try to as I do these workshops have those conversations have that kind of roll around we'll ask some of the answers that you came up with well the kids are like this is cool and they really like it and parents are just like this is science I'm like yeah yeah it's science and they're like it's art they're like yeah yeah it's art too and we're just like have these conversations of just getting excited about art and science and like just making music with plants and that we can do it together because the conduct like you have to like have a congruent like chain right so there's ways to like connect to the plant and connect to each other and I can actually have it to like if I hold your hand hold mine we would have a connected current and then if we let go it would be broken so I want to do more workshops where like there could be like just commutal like basically people playing in the park and holding each other's hands which is like something that we like miss right yeah and it's like how do we get people to do that more in a way that it's just natural or even just brings up thinking or just makes them feel kind of good and they're just go home and they're like oh that was nice you know but it's like just having that feeling of kind of connectivity and that that play and just that thinking it doesn't always happen because we just get so used to you know being in a park that was made for two years or something. It's amazing that you were able to do that with technology yeah bring people together to hold hands just to play and play with plants yeah like that's all I want but it's parents brought their kids because it's STEM yeah yeah yeah right right man but it works right yeah and so I kind of like I have that humor like this is the first time like doing to me this is the most accessible project that I've done in the sense where I could kind of connect all like even my humor and kind of like bring it in because the other stuff is so heavy it hurts I have to step back from it for a while because it just hurts it's just like sorry can I say okay I mean it's that painful and this when you're doing this it's like oh wow like I had one of the people who were working at the museum they started crying because they didn't expect them they didn't know what they were working on and I was just like they're just like oh the kids are so happy and they're connecting to like the plant that sits in the corner most of the time and people over water it or something you know because they don't really know how to connect to it so the digital world is not so impersonal as we might think right yeah and I've had people say to me well you know who've grown up with computer screens this is an intimate space the pixels are intimate and I hadn't really thought of it that way before but yeah it can be a little teeny biosensor that somebody just you know used a little teeny breadboard with a couple you know transistors and you know a couple like sensors or what not just bring it out to a midi feed and there you go that's great and right now I do have this piece still at the Boston Children's Museum it's this one I called Handmade because children walk up to this pedestal that it has it's like a little fake grass mound and it has a leap motion which is used for video games and it's like basically it's an extravagant inverted or inverted mouse sensor that also kind of works like a connect camera from your Xbox and repairing it I worked with Chris Knopka who helped me program it through Max and helped me make a patch that basically took all the extreme like you're talking about information like when you have data it can be overwhelming so it just basically funnels the data into a motion like something that picks up the motion of the children's hands so we probably have children I mean I heard some people stood on it was like gorilla tapping it and you know we have kids that bring hand action and so we had to control that a little bit and still make it so that like the intention would control the video in the way that I as an artist wanted it to but also in a way that would like communicate to the children like something's happening so when they move their hand over it it will either bulge if they move this way or twist if they do this it will like if you can twist a little bit if you do things like that so it really works good with like little children hands adult hands is a little tricky and it really do have to kind of like have it visible because it is still a camera and a sensor but it's kind of beautiful because it was a simple way for me to communicate to young people that we can control our environment and there's ways to have fun with it but it also can be very detrimental when they move their hand like this it crunches it up like a ball and what does that mean conceptually and what does that mean in general so this technological connection overall though looks hopeful yeah I hope so and what about a lot of this is nature in an urban environment what do you have to say about that part it is like this piece was really nice because it actually was in the arboretum so it was like and I picked ferns on purpose and it's like a tilt shift lens so I got really close and it was like kind of animating this like turning this very small environment into a very big one and also kind of bringing the children into a world but it was nice to kind of work local and it was nice to bring like a kind of one side of the city into another side of the city and another side of the city like in the Boston Children's Museum in the area where it's like extremely gentrified and there's like how do these two places think about each other what is the land saying to each other like do we know how are there spores that move like does one part get to grow in another part I know that's where my brain goes but I was really excited to kind of bring that in and to bring like parts of plants that are kind of ancient that we kind of overlook because you're like ferns those are cheap in the store it's like that's not a orchid or something like that I love orchids and my favorite is thinking about like I don't know just kind of again making something that's simple kind of special and like asking for that to be focused on I want to step back and ask a general question of all three of you so there was this social media week conference in New York City that I read a huff post article about and apparently the main take away from it was how important it was for brands and marketers to quote deliver the human experience because of how alienating and how fake everything really is let's try and make it so fake that people believe it what do you think of that I think it's a great reality versus virtual reality versus what people want us to believe I think it goes back to Keaton likes to talk about reality and if it's real it's interesting though because the marketing firms are the groups that are driving all of this development it's are they the legitimate people to do this of course they think they are they're trying to construct a reality for us and I think it's really important for people to fight back some of it is not so bad there are some brands that I like what they do and I like their reality but we're constructing our own brands online too our different personas I was marketing this event exactly but it's interesting to hear it in a conference where people were probably paying a few thousand dollars a few thousand dollars to go to the event and be told that they need to be more human on the internet and what does it mean when a commercial entity is doing that and that of course can go back to corporations or people and people are data online that can be commodified and I think it's I can quickly go down a black hole with that conversation where advertising because you've worked in advertising and I have to go down that black hole it works but it's still I do want people and I think about kids and this advertising and I want people to be more aware of how businesses are trying to construct this reality for us online so let's use this as a pivot to move on to looking at some talking about some other artists who do work of this sort and we have a person here that we've mentioned before Hito Steyerl who did a piece called Liquidity, Inc. which was basically about the breakdown, the destruction of the commercial world do you want to mention anything about this piece or her work? This piece was also at the ICA for a little while and it's a lot about I think it brings in not a idea of reality because it's she sort of mimics a news like a breaking news clip so she's German and she's very aggressive in her presentations she has a complex background and she does have a complex background yeah but in this piece a lot you see there's a lot of there's a map and I think she's talking a lot about climate change too and like weather and politics but it's in a way that's really difficult to understand and it's disconnected in my mind very much like our experience online when we're trying to I don't know do something on the internet and we're so disconnected in what we do I actually saw her speak at Yale that was like intensely life changing for me a little bit in the moment of where I was doing my work or work changing so it was at Yale and she kind of created she was dismantling the talk she was like this is not academic but it was academic but it wasn't so I was actually really amazed by how she was able to not punk the system but there was just something kind of interesting and like I just I didn't know her work well enough at the time and then once I knew that I like got all the books and I read her book she's very academic and I think for a lot of people maybe inaccessible but she uses very normal everyday things in her work it was just really interesting to kind of experience that and I was like wow this is why performance is so like powerful and how amazing it is even in her like she's like always on even when she's giving the talk that was like our piece right and then we have Joan Jonas yeah she's here so I really like Joan Jonas when I first learned about her work it was about the mirror piece that she did and she's been around for a while well no she had people in the park that had mirrors on them and I've always been really interested in mirrors and video as two different ways of seeing one thing and like with a mirror you can smash it and it'll still show bits of what's happening around you but with a camera if you smash it it will break so but with a camera you can fast forward and pause and stop and rewind time and with mirrors it's just showing you exactly what it is so I think especially with mirrors and looking at reality and not being able to record something it's just this very interesting way of seeing what's right in front of you and to have people walking around with mirrors that show you what you're looking at but it's through this completely different perspective because it's not what you're looking at I think mirrors are just really good non-technical ways to talk about reality also and I like the way Joan Jonas she's very much a visionary and uses performance and video and she uses a lot of props and mediated images I find that the way she does that really inspiring yeah, Sonia Woolfolk Sonia Woolfolk is the artwork it's called Afrofuturism which I don't I guess get and then Paddocks is like the first series of creating a world that she made up and took the role as an anthropologist I wish we had more pictures it was all female as a world and they had evolved to connect genetically connect to plants so she has like this whole series that she was doing I think at Chicago Institute that was really interesting to me to create all these kind of like personas and take the role of kind of like a colonizer and then create people to then perform and then create videos around and this is like how it evolved this is like the newer work beautiful who's next Lynn Harshman-Liesin we talked about Lynn Harshman-Liesin she does a lot of art and technology but we talked about this during mine Sandra Perry is a she's a young artist who I really admire she works with avatars a lot and this piece was also at the ICA it was probably my favorite piece in that art in the age of the internet show it's a modified you know exercise bike with these screens in front of it with her face as the main as the only thing that you're looking at and she's it's a very immersive experience but with very ordinary objects you think of an immersive experience as like VR with the headset but it's just it's like basic computer monitors and stationary bike and she she goes into a lot of the issues with avatars the way we can create avatars they're very much geared towards male white centric people and she had a hard time finding her own features and body type of air when she was trying to create her own avatar and actually I saw Jasmine Roberts speak last year last year at MIT and she was saying the same thing and she she just finally created her own he's like well I can't you know it's I can't find someone online that looks like me so I'm just gonna make my own it took a long time she mentioned like five different software that she had to use to do it so Sondra Perry I like a lot she's very critical of technology and the internet and the way we use it in a way that I find really useful and I think we could learn from Pipilotti wrist I saw this show down in New York it was amazing I was talking about immersive floating in these repetitive like you know like the imageries that were on these clouds on the ceiling like you see there and it was very calming soap and skin was playing yeah it was really great I like her work because she also has been making videos for so long and the technology has gotten so much better but still has this very rough aesthetic and uses the camera and her choice of things like the bathing women and the teacups falling together in one of her pieces is like so weird this was at the New Museum right so this was on three different levels so it was interesting to move up between the levels physically and this is actually very different than any of the work I've ever seen and I was really moved by the people laying on the ground and everybody kind of like you know my feet are tired but it was like a moment for everybody just to relax and that was kind of beautiful and kind of nice it was like a bed yeah and Pipa Lodi Rist is inspiring to me too because she does video editing in the commercial space and does her work on the side and I think we all have like five titles each you know five jobs and I found that really comforting to learn that she had this intense job doing video editing doing this really amazing beautiful and innovative video artwork of her own is there anyone who has a question was if we haven't been talking hi so I've been thinking about time throughout this even before you mentioned it explicitly Lonnie and I don't know that I have a question so much like I want to talk about time a little bit with you guys and bring this topic up so something I noticed prior to that were time stamps on not only the tender which a time stamp on tender communicates a lot and I was reading a lot into that with yours but also I'm not sure if it was documentation or whether it was how the piece exists in your piece the drawing it says it's like 941 a.m you know and we talk about how how the internet is sort of the end of photography and it's ephemeral and it's the end of the decisive moment but then it's like no dude like we've got literally the metadata says the exact point so I don't know I feel like the time stamps communicate a lot I think time especially with tinder it's interesting because it does like you're saying show interest or not and like how if someone waits a certain amount of time like with texting is the perfect example like I've gotten in so much trouble if I don't respond in a day and you have so much things to do exactly exactly and then you get it's supposed to be asynchronous though it implies so much I have friends who get very mad if I don't text back exactly and then you have to figure out which friends will really get offended or which friends won't and it's just it's madness but it's insane but that is especially interesting in communication to one another how time is this thing that has come along with technology too like when you're on the phone with someone rarely are you checking how long you're on the phone with them or it's a lot of things of that nature but if you're texting you're waiting to see if someone responds quickly enough or not I think time with video is also interesting you and I both do a lot of performance based video things and it is like when you have something on the internet like the spam piece I've had a lot of friends watch it but they scrub through it how long is it and it's not that long it's like three minutes oh it's less than five minutes it's less than five and people just really have a hard time sitting through that one I once in like in school I did a 15 minute video and I almost gave myself pneumonia doing it so I was like alright you know I'm pillin' this and they were just like they're pissed my committee was pissed they're like how dare you how dare you make us sit through that you should edit that with looking at how time exists in different ways in different parts of the world I thought that was so interesting and my thesis project in college I edited this video down to an hour and a half and it was the same thing where I sat down and I was like no one's gonna sit through this so I made it an installation instead because I knew that people wouldn't sit through the entire thing because it was long shots and you had to wait and sit with it and be there because it was so possessive I mean like you know if news is given to me in the form of video I will write by it I won't look at it in a news video I want it written so I can scan and get what I want from it Well not for you Well I'm Lonnie when you go to our galleries and museums do you watch every video in its entirety? It was really hard at the ICA show that one that we've been talking about because I tried to go to every single one and I remember them being like like seriously I had to go to that show by myself I wait in line for the VR piece I had to go back and watch the videos not all of them, the most of them Star Wars piece, I get laid with that but there's a point like it's a lot Well that's the thing and as an artist I think you have to decide and it's really hard to gauge also what exact number are people willing to look at and what exact number are you willing to sacrifice for the next six minutes is what I was told No, literally, technically, yeah I think that's too long Right, three minutes to two and that's like if you want to get cut and dry with it and that's just like messed up when you're talking about things that are centuries of colonialism people losing their land or gentrification How do you sum that up in three minutes? Yeah But I think part of what we grapple with is that we don't have to Right But sometimes you get in this tug of war with yourself thinking of other people actually actually digesting your work and you think, oh well then I need to make it shorter because we don't trust them to sit down and watch it But it's interesting, so the thing of body and digital is like I learned that when I performed it live people were like I want more which is interesting to see that the caught me in that I was just wondering if you go to the museum of fine arts how much time do you spend in front of each painting? There's some that I just go back to I mean I'm more drawn to sculpture personally but yeah, there are some paintings that I'll stand a long time to stare at them and some people would just be like why does that matter? But then it would be the breakdown of all the imagery I'm trying to think of one that I would just sit there and stare at for a long time but I can't Has the digital experience highlighted our relationship to time or is it just the same thing in a different realm? I think it's changed it in that we try to be in so many places at once that time isn't the same, it's not linear so it's not linear and thus that's why we feel like we have to shorten everything because the distractions are so are so strong Non-linear editing changed everything when you have your master, that's all you have and you cut it up and then you're like, wow what do I do because you have to take all that time to make another master and now we just have this infinite amount of changes And in theory you could create an infinite number of versions of that video and then your sequence is infinite but of course you don't have enough time to do that and of course with so many things available you want to be watching everything too which is why you've run through the MFA to try to see FPs and then you get all this FOMO and depression and so if it's immersive that then changes it, right? but then if somebody messes up the speakers and they're not playing, that's a different experience or if you're looking at it through a side wall so that's why it's interesting to think about time and space and how do we edit that? And I feel like with time I keep trying to not use a iPhone or smartphone and the thing it comes down to is the GPS my alarm clock which I can get another alarm clock but that's this core thing that I've become so accustomed now to setting five separate alarms that play back to back to back and I've bought an alarm clock that will just go one time and I've been late to multiple things so it's a very silly way to talk about time but it's true that's true I dream a lot I actually started the awake project as a way to get my eyes out of bed so I had I had rules at first and I think I had a time I was like I have to take the picture in the first like three seconds that I wake up and I had to actually get out of bed so it's funny if you go through all the photos in the beginning I'm in front of a wall I think I actually wasn't in my living room a lot because I would actually get out of the room because my husband was sleeping I would take a photo where there was some light but then if you go towards the end where I was like starting to get really sick of the project I was just like laying in bed and I had no more rules I had to take the photo and then I'd put it down and I'd go back to sleep it just all failed the whole point but that time was really important because I didn't want too much time to lapse and then I was awake and then I was thinking about the photo Is there anybody else here who works with technology and art Intersecting? Yes Do you have any things you want to add? Well, you talked a lot about how technology is interfacing with these other things to create a synthesis of the two and like oppositional art for instance Have you found any instances where the technology was hindering the message or where the synthesis was less because of the integration of technology Yeah Well, I feel like that's why I went to performance because the video was just kind of like limiting the three minutes the six minutes wasn't cutting it and then I recently applied for a grant and I got some feedback which was awesome and they told me the work wasn't sticky enough Yes, it was a marketing term What does that mean? I know, I know but actually the sensors are extremely sticky The sensors are very sticky No But it was interesting because there's also a statement of it's just plants and also that made me think that maybe the technology wasn't intense enough there wasn't enough of a catch for how I was using the technology because they were kind of like what's the end game they luckily didn't use that term which I would have just hung up the phone but just thinking about kind of like wrong with me that comment of it's just plants it's not sticky enough and like what does that mean and like how then does something that incorporates like nature the environment and like technology how does that become something that becomes sticky enough for somebody to want to like fund or for a city to like want to Those are different questions like for people to care but then for people to fund different people So it's like interesting this isn't really like they aren't just plants and I was like this isn't really about marketing as I unfortunately had to do that to get to this point to have this conversation so I think what paid off the most was that conversation It's interesting I think technology is also not 100% reliable so when you're having an installation or a performance or things like that and you practice it many times and everyone has it nailed down and then the day of something inevitably happens and then the piece is about technology and then the technology is not working so I've had situations like that that have been this happens with me in real life all the time exactly but I think that also is very real and in those moments I say like look this is part of it then we have to just see it as that because technology and then we can have a whole conversation about how this relates to everything that we're going through as a society right now so people don't like that conversation when the tech is failing but outside of it and I think back to your question or you're saying when is it not I think it's more when is it just not appropriate but I think a different question like what you're saying is when do you just hate it and don't want to use anymore and there are two different questions but often you just can't handle it anymore so you have to change it or back the technology up because it's just taking too long or it doesn't work you have to troubleshoot that's where I think I've had the most issues is just trying to figure out the balance perfectly represents life right and it's much like in our work life in our personal life yeah archiving my digital photos has been on my to-do list for like four years you know I'll get to it eventually and then I'll have a million photos I have 17,000 that I need to download from my phone but I think I struggle with how much to use technology I want to keep using it I want to keep learning more it's interesting and I want to be relevant and be just learn more and it's always changing so you have to but I also want to take a break from it and just draw I think with the photos especially I think all the time about if I have grandkids what photos am I going to show them because my mother and grandmother have books and if you just have 17,000 photos like what do you choose to show to kids in the future and it's just such a complex thing to me and that goes back to time also and like how and archiving and it's just like how do you manage that and what stands out and what doesn't and it's confusing well you can just like donate it as ephemera from the period to some library at that point and then they'll figure out how to chop it up and use it but libraries have so much data now they don't want to do with it and libraries haven't caught up to the digital archives at least to the point of trying to archive all these millions and billions of pieces of data and photos it's a lot but I think that's just really interesting I keep using it in my work because it is so painful to work with and it's like inevitable technology and it's like I could ignore it but then I'm just going to be behind the times and it's like a tool to me when you want to use it that's the effect or whatever that you want but then I have my own rules and one of it is throwing in something that drives you crazy and so that doesn't just happen automatically collaboration being outside working with weather, technology and so all those variables I don't know I think it's interesting because that whole kind of experience to like growing up because my father grew up in that time in the 1950s he's much older than some of my other peers, parents and whatnot and that kind of there was this pivotal moment as an architect where he had to decide to either get in with the times to do digital CAD or not and that was like life changing and so I found that really interesting to see how I actually went through that exact experience myself because I grew up in the 50s he refused and I refused to and it kind of changed mine and I was just like I'm never going to do that I'm always going to embrace it and so we kind of have run these parallel lives which has been kind of interesting on the other hand I wound up in sustainable technologies which is all about this stuff so you never know even if you try to actively reject it you still have to deal with it right it's unavoidable now so back to the beginning it's pervasive ubiquitous it runs us unless we go off on a camping trip and turn it all off there's so many stories and it comes down to it you can't really get away from it are there any other questions? my name is Charity I'm also an artist that works on the intersection of art and technology and a lot of different crossroads including like archives and humanities and what not my question is mostly for you Keaton so your work specifically with Tinder and even like the spam piece I guess I'm just wondering like what is the deeper message of what you were trying to convey because you said with the spam piece the fact that they kind of like pulled out your profile and said that it was quote unquote spam was something that you felt was personally offensive but like you went into the piece specifically not representing yourself not having any actual images of yourself not actually having conversations but communicating completely through emoji so how could you... it was after but I would say that I represented myself in the way that I wanted to which was by choosing not to use my face like whenever I've been on dating apps during this time I was intentionally for art purposes or not not putting my face on because I wanted to see who would respond to that because I think that I whoever I would want to meet who I would end up say potentially going out with it wouldn't be based on the way that I look so that was a choice of how I wanted to represent myself in that way but with being called spam that was just such an insane concept to me because it was this word that was created you know you have this terminology that's something that's both physical and digital and spam online is something that you put in your trash folder and you... it is not wanted and so because being saying that the way I represented myself online felt like something that is unwanted was where everything kind of began and it was because it was that specific word and the history of that word and how it exists in this physical and digital form Historically it's really complex because of the war the spam is so popular in Hawaii and it has to do with rations and what's available and survival Was that your whole question? How awful it was Well yeah, I was actually looking for more clarification on because for me I feel like art is something that is used to actually get at the actual deeper core of what makes us human and to actually illuminate for people who might not even really consider these topics things that are important and things that really need to be said and really need to be displayed in your work absolutely with you crushing the plant kind of like this symbol of colonization and how that colonization has impacted you as an individual especially as a woman who was from Hawaii that was annexed or even your work with you putting your heartbeat on this physical piece of an actual animal and then having your face on it in a digital space and you're mixing all these different things I feel like those works actually were saying that your work with the spam was probably like to me it came across as you wanting to take umbridge at something and then using that as as kind of as your your open doorway to create a work that was visually unappealing but at the same time didn't really have any depth to it Well so for me the work is about just the general concept of identity and representing yourself online and if we have these structures and these systems that are saying that we can't represent ourselves online then what does that mean for everything for avatars for LinkedIn for who we exist as online which is obviously a big conversation that's happening now and we have not only one version of ourselves online but multiple versions of ourselves so if we have these applications that are limiting the way that we do that look like for how people can represent any aspect of themselves online so that would be the general theme of what it was about and then the visuals and the sound specifically were to match the feeling of being called spam and just the ickiness that comes from that core concept of not being able to represent who I am in the way that I want to and then knowing that if I don't want to represent myself in the way that I want to then I can't go on this dating app and maybe I really wanted to meet the love of my life on the dating app and if I can't represent myself in the way that I want to then how can I find someone who will want that version of me or even just the question of who has that choice, who has the control to decide who we are and how we can present ourselves and who can say that you should be off the application and that your identity feels like spam right that you're like that's trash but for the integrity of the application right because people are going on Tinder because they actually want to meet a person they actually want to connect with a person somebody that they might potentially be in a relationship with, have children with what not and so if somebody came across this interaction with you where they're trying to connect with you and you're just replying to them with emojis and you don't even have any photos and you're on the site that you didn't create it was created by somebody else that if those people complain to the people who own the site obviously they have the ability and they have the right to stop anybody from using the site that will cause people to move away from it. I guess my cut, yeah it's why would that be a bad thing. Like maybe emojis are and they were two separate projects the emoji project was one installation and the spam was I wasn't using emojis at that time. So this was just you not using your face and your body not my face but my the mask and my artwork and my website, my bio just linked to my website and so I was hoping that instead of swiping right or left based on what I looked like that people would go to my work online and see these different ideas and versions of me and then create a conversation based off of that. Without knowing what your face looks like. Yeah and I think it's super relevant now as we're dealing with Facebook especially being trying to figure out oh how do I control this how do I stay in the driver's seat as the puppeteer for this platform but still allow democracy to function the way that it should you know and I think your piece gets at the the control that's an issue with these you know like Mark Zuckerberg's making final decisions about what's okay and what's not okay to say online and what's news and what's not news. Who gets to see it and how many people get to see it they decide so. Right who gets to see it and how when is it genocide when is it not like it's a gateway into a lot of much bigger issues that are finally becoming big enough issues that they're being discussed in Congress you know so I think it's a like it's spam it's a can of spam so it's not it doesn't feel that deep in the video maybe but I think it definitely scratches the surface for me on some really relevant issues like right now and with that I think we're going to wind up our discussion here and our talk. Thank you very much thank you all for coming you guys are awesome thank you all