Past exhibitions

Radicant Bodies

| Amy Youngs

In Botany, to be radicant is to have roots that grow above the ground. This form of rooting allows plant species to mobilize, adapt, and grow on any surface. During an unprecedented moment of remoteness, our proximity to the tactile, irregular, and bumpy surfaces of everyday life in the classroom, in our labs, and our studios are suddenly smoothened, stretched thin, and illuminated through our screens.
RADICANT BODIES highlights the work of students who have found new ways to enact senses of creativity, community, and care during an incredible shift in our relationship towards technology and social proxemics. Our bodies negotiate distance and intimacy; the line between visibility and surveillance; what is organic and inorganic, to make sense of the complex terrain and interfaces we find ourselves traversing today. Student works featured in this Spring’s Art & Technology exhibition are selected from their courses in Digital Imaging, Internet Art, 3D Modeling, Moving Image Art, New Media Robotics, Computer Animation, Graphic Novel, Art Games, Sound & Image, and Studio Practice.

Can You See My Screen?

artwork by Ada Huang
| Amy Youngs
3D render by Ada Huang. Text and poster design by Dalena Tran and Hirad Sab.

The contemporary moment is one of unprecedented transfiguration. A constant tug of war where institutions, communities, interests, and most importantly, individuals coincide in an undulating state of deformation and alteration. Those boundaries that defined our movements and occupations have blurred to the point of non-existence, facilitating an amorphous space for constant activity. Shopping for winter clothes while attending a lecture, replying to business emails at the dinner table, or participating in job training while taking the subway, the established limits of social and personal spaces are expunged, and with that, so are the boundaries of the individual. And while this shapeless chimeric reality in its unparalleled distraction and discontinuity demands the individual’s utmost awareness and participation, it continues to expand its disciplinary practices to every crevice of daily life. The punch clock is now next to the bed; better wake up, sunshine!

Nothing is ever finished anymore, and no one is ever done with anything—the corporation, the educational system, the factory, and the household subsist in a simultaneous state of coexistence. And it is at the dawn of this new day of bewildering complexity and anomalous virtual convergence that I ask from you, from you the eternal surveilling gaze, from you my mentor, my peer, my adversary, and my friend: the audio seems to be working, but can you see my screen?

EXHIBITION ARTWORKS

 

Cloud Crusher – Spring 2020

| Amy Youngs
logo for exhibition
* show online now, click to visit *

We 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.

Visit show

 

* Lozano, Kevin, Can the Internet Survive Climate Change? The New Republic,

Non-Human Intelligence

| Amy Youngs

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.

 

Trans-Species Skins

| Amy Youngs

Trans-Species Skins is a themed art exhibition exploring skin as a metaphor and substance that transcends species categories. Skin is the multilayered and multipurpose organ that shifts from thick to thin, tight to loose, wet to dry, across the landscapes of bodies and machine interfaces. Natural and artificial skin responds to heat, cold, pleasure and pain. It lacks boundaries and flows seamlessly from exposed surfaces to our internal cavities real and virtual. It is a self-repairing, semi-permeable surface, with inner layers that are flush with nerves and glands, sensors and chips. New tools allow artists, designers, and engineers to look at a new emerging organicism that takes shape across the surface of the grown and manufactured. Skins can modulate meaning, touch, function and can provide feedback and change with light and heat. Flexible membranes embedded with sensors and materials are bent, impregnated, or inflated to become structure. Re-skinning allows deceit; the non-living can approximate life, and the living can appear otherwise.

This semester, students in the Art & Technology courses – ranging from animation, art-science, digital imaging, and 3D modeling to robotics –  have created individual and group artworks related to this theme and they will be presenting them in this juried exhibition.

Opening Wednesday, December 6, 5:00pm – 8:00pm

Open hours: Thursday, December 7, 11:00am – 5:00pm & Friday Dec 8, 11:00am – 4:00pm

Where: Hopkins Hall Gallery, Lobby, Corridor, and Collaboratory – directions

Admission is free and open to the public

 

 

Filter Bubbles and Inequality

| Amy Youngs

Filter Bubble is an Art & Technology Student Exhibition open to the public Wednesday, December 7, 2016 to Friday, December 9, 2016. Located in Hopkins Hall Gallery, Lobby, Corridors, Collaboratory and New Media Labs – all on the first floor of Hopkins Hall.

Reception: Wednesday, December 7 from 5-8 PMFilter Bubble banner
Filter Bubble is a themed, new media art exhibition that examines the hyper-personalization of information surrounding each of us, based on algorithms that are trained by our individual interests and world views. Students working in 3D animation, 3D modeling and rapid prototyping, robotic art, internet art, game art, and moving image art forms will exhibit their investigations into the meanings, consequences, and futures of a citizenship shaped by like-minded viewpoints.

What does it take to break your filter bubble? Is it possible to see through someone else’s?

Gallery of student work from this exhibition

The Center for Ethics and Human Values, is offering awards to artists in the exhibition – and throughout the Department of Art Open House  – who have made compelling artwork related to the theme of Inequality.

Moral concern with inequality is about far more than economic inequality. It is also about political, legal, educational, and health inequalities and how these interact with each other. And it’s about how these inequalities connect with underlying issues of race, gender, ethnicity, religion, LGBTQ status, geography, and other factors. These different dimensions of inequality are often difficult to appreciate, especially when we do not experience them firsthand. An artwork can change this. An artwork can force us to confront the significance of inequalities we often overlook. Submissions will be evaluated both for artistic merit and for how they explore issues related to the COMPAS theme.

This contest is open to:

  • Graduate and undergraduate students currently enrolled in a class in the Department of Art
Prizes:
  • Grand Prize, $500
  • Up to 3 awards of excellence, $250 each
  • Up to 12 awards of distinction, $50 each
All types of art presented at the Department of Art Open House are eligible: painting/drawing, sculpture, glass, photography, art and technology, printmaking, ceramics, etc.
Your work must be presented in the Department of Art Open House or Filter Bubble exhibition, December 7th 2016, in order to be considered.
Entrants must register by December 6th: http://go.osu.edu/inequality-art-registration
Winners will be announced by email and on our social media accounts on December 9th.

Maker Faire Ottawa

| Amy Youngs
selfie moment
Selfie Moment, by Ethan Schaefer

Art and Tech students and faculty and alumni presented work at Maker Faire in Ottawa Canada in a special art exhibition titled Preternatural, co-curated by Ohio State University Professor Ken Rinaldo and Maker Faire curator Remco Volmer. They invited artists whose works address the perspectives of animals, media and technological representations, ecosystems, futures, coevolution, symbiosis and friction between human and non-humans. These included 3D rapid prototyped sculptures, 3D animations, robotic artworks, performance and moving image art installations.

makemag
Makezine wrote a story about the Preternatural exhibition
Ada Fruit story on Simon
AdaFruit wrote about Jeremy Viny and Andrew Frueh’s project in the exhibition

Invited artists: Madeleine Rico, Jeremy Viny, Trademark Gunderson, Jordan Reynolds, Ethan Schaefer, Catherine Lee, Danner Seyffer-Sprague, Danielle Popp, Yoni Mizrachi, Sarah Goetz, Amy Youngs, Grant Parish, Casey Hamilton, Daniel Popp, Christine Rucker, Katherine Beigel, Drew Grigsby, Christina Howard, Kyler Holland, Maggie Barrie, Riley Patrick, Makayla Combs, Nick Cunningham, Hui Yang, Jayne Kennedy, Brandon Messner, Jacob Markusic, Brandon Ball, Michael Anderson, Leah Lafarciola, Gaopeng Chen, Jay Young and Ken Rinaldo.

Special Thanks to the United States Department of State for the generous grant allowing travel funds for these artists and to Maker Faire Ottawa for this generous opportunity as well as the Department of Art at the Ohio State University in supporting this international opportunity.

BioPresence Exhibition documentation

| Amy Youngs

Visit the online catalog and video that documents the work of the artists who presented work in the BioPresence exhibition December 2015. This non-human animal themed exhibition, included Art and Tech faculty, graduates and undergraduates as well as other invited artists and international sound artists.

Biopresence exhibition website and catalog

Art & Tech Exhibition: Loving the Obligate Symbiont

| Amy Youngs

Loving the Obligate Symbiont: Department of Art, Art + Technology Exhibition
Thursday, April 21, 2016 to Monday, April 25, 2016

Loving the Obligate Symbiont celebrates the value of the intertwined symbiosis that makes all living systems possible. This themed, new media exhibition includes 3D animations, robotic art, internet art, tactical media, art inspired by mycorrhizal networks, digital art, installation, 3D modeling and rapid prototyping, digital video and algorithmic approaches to representing the concept of our interdependence with living systems and non living, emergent machine intelligences.

"Where Rocks Are Fed To Trees" an installation by Art/Science course.
Where Rocks Are Fed To Trees – immersive art/science installation.

This bi-annual juried exhibition highlights art-making and experimentation in the Art and Technology area of the Department of Art during Spring Semester 2016. Be sure to see the immersive art installation created by students and faculty in a co-taught art/science course on display in room 340.

Open Hours:
Thursday 4/21: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Friday 4/22: 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Monday 4/25: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Reception: Monday, April 25, 5-8PM

Where: Hopkins Hall Gallery, Lobby, Corridor, Collaboratory, & rooms 156, 162, 340.
Hopkins Hall, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH
Map and info on how to get here by bike, bus, or car & parking.