Author: youngs.6@osu.edu

Cloud Crusher – Spring 2020

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logo for exhibitionWe are collected, crunched, and curated by surveillance capitalism as we move through real and virtual spaces. New and improved pleasures, fears, insecurities, and desires are constructed for our consumption; continually forming and reforming us along the way. We experience our own data shadows and code bodies. Our data fingerprints possess a mirror of us, with in-depth knowledge about who and what we have become.

Image created by Kaylie Reynolds in Art 3000 Digital Imaging, Spring 2020.

Can we be who we are, or have become, without our quick connections to search engines, our constructed social media selves, friends, and our surveillance data? Does it matter?

Though we might imagine the internet as an immaterial, fluffy cloud, it is actually the largest coal-fired machine on the entire planet. Our server clouds are crushing us. And with 90% of the internet being advertising, it is both paying the electric bills and simultaneously fueling global warming through increased energy use – and material consumption of the earth.

  • What does it mean to be a human animal in a technologized world, where our means of connection is also a major cause of global warming?
  • Can we decolonize technology and communication infrastructure?
  • Can we maintain artistic integrity when we use technological tools?
  • How can we work towards a connected future that moves beyond the green-washing narratives Big Tech sells us?
  • Can we crush the cloud, confront the environmental challenges, design a greener internet, while remaining connected?

Cloud Crusher is the Spring the Themed Art & Technology Exhibition, where students explore these ideas and themes through their courses in Digital Imaging, 3D modeling, Art Games, 3D Animation, Moving Image Art, and Studio Practice.

In keeping with our virtual teaching and physical distancing, this exhibition will be exhibited online starting April 24th, 2020.

Art & Tech student club hosts Multivarius Games event

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Join the Art & Tech Student Club on Tuesday, Feb 25th at 7pm in Hopkins Hall room 250 to learn about Multivarius Games, a game creation company here in Columbus, Ohio. With Katie Hamill, BFA alumna of Art & Tech!

poster for multivarius games event

All are welcome and encouraged to join the Art & Tech student club. Come to the meetings each Thursday this semester at 7pm in Hopkins 180a, or contact Megan Wright wright.1945@buckeyemail.osu.edu.

Ruth Burke Visiting Artist

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OSU Art & Tech Alumna Ruth Burke (BFA 2012) is visiting to present her recent artwork. Her work involves interspecies collaborations with animals; inspired by her relationships with them. Ruth’s visit is sponsored by the Graduate Student Art Club at Ohio State University.

Ruth Burke digital imaging art
Susurrus 2019, by Ruth Burke

More on Ruth’s Website.

Flyer for Ruth Burke visiting artist

Un-becoming Carbon

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Un-becoming Carbon: Traveling in Intercellular Space focuses on the importance of carbon sequestration by plants. The viewers enter the plants’ intercellular space, beginning their journey as a molecule of carbon dioxide, donating their carbon to the plant’s body, and emerging as life-giving oxygen. The interactive installation explores this process through physical, audio and virtual experiences. Entering a giant leaf through a stomatal opening, the viewers are surrounded by sculptural plant cells. Palisade Parenchyma droop from above while below Spongy Parenchyma and Stomata line the floor. Soft structures invite viewers to rest and continue their experience by entering virtual reality. An exploration between the macroverse and the microverse begins in a forest where the viewers take on the role of a carbon particle being absorbed into a leaf; first traveling through intercellular space, then moving into a cell to become part of its substance.

Concluding the experience, visitors are invited to adopt and nurture a living plant propagule to continue its carbon-binding work in their own home. Plant awareness posters act as a souvenir from their intercellular space travel.

This multimedia art installation was collaboratively created by the students and professors of an Art & Science class (Art 5001) by Ellie Bartlett, Jacklyn Brickman, Ashley Browne, Amanda Buckeye, Diva Colter, Mona Gazala, Youji Han, Saba Hashemi Shahraki, Brice Jordan, Liam Manning, Iris Meier, Brooke Stanley, Lily Thompson, Zachary Upperman, Stephen White, Taylor Woodie, and Amy Youngs.

Art and Technology show poster 2019

 

Presented as part of the Art & Technology exhibition, Non-Human Intelligence.

Come out and celebrate with us at the opening on December 4th, 5 – 7pm.

Hopkins Hall, the Ohio State University –  campus map and transportation

Non-Human Intelligence

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Art and Technology show poster 2019Art & Technology exhibition

Non-Human Intelligence: In the realm of animal, insect, plant and computer systems, can humans co-create with “other”? Can we look beyond human-dominated ways of understanding?

Artists, technologists, and scientists are as likely to collaborate with bees, bacteria, spiders as with artificial intelligence in the creation of their work, provoking difficult questions regarding the nature of creativity and non-human others’ consciousness. When working with living systems, the biggest struggle is to keep the systems alive and this requires a sensitive humility and respect. Donna Haraway’s concept of “becoming with” describes the back and forth nature of interacting with animals as we form a connection and broaden our notion of the nature of the intelligence of others. It entertains the idea of multispecies and transspecies interactions in the co-creative process. “Becoming-with” allows us to better acknowledge “others” right to exist, thrive, and express individual agencies.

Through an expanded understanding of the intelligent, intertwined, symbiotic nature of our living planet, might we become more human?

“Becoming-with” allows us to better acknowledge “others” right to exist, thrive and express individual agencies. Through accommodating non-human others, might we become more human in the process, by demonstrating an understanding of the deeply intertwined symbiotic nature of our living planet?

This semester, students in the Art & Technology courses – ranging from animation, art-science, 3D modeling, and internet art to robotics –  have created individual and group artworks related to this theme and they will be presenting them in this juried exhibition. Make sure to visit the special installation in the Emerging Technology Studios on the 3rd floor of Hopkins Hall.

  • Opening celebration: Wednesday, December 4, 2019, 5:00pm – 7:00pm
  • Open hours: Thursday, December 5, 11:00am – 5:00pm & Friday Dec 6, 11:00am – 4:00pm
  • Where: Hopkins Hall, the Ohio State University –  campus map and transportation
  • 1st floor lobby, corridor, and collaboratory, plus rooms 156, 160, and 346
  • Admission is free and open to the public.

 

Jacklyn Brickman presents “Spellbreaker”

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Jacklyn Brickman, MFA student in Art & Technology, was awarded a Tech Hub grant to produce an art installation that connects the human body to black walnut trees. She discusses her finished work Spellbreaker and her thoughts on the role that technology can play in helping us understand living systems.