State Of The Art

Latest Episodes:

Virtual Borders & New Realities with Alfredo Salazar-Caro, Multimedia Artist Oct 24, 2019

Show notes

In this episode we speak with Alfredo Caro-Salazar about his latest piece, Dreams of the Jaguar’s Daughter which uses VR to immerse patrons in the migrant experience. Alfredo also discusses the Digital Museum of Digital Art, a virtual institution he founded with collaborator, William Robertson.

Check out Dreams of the Jaguar's Daughter's Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwB4t1eeC60&t=0

Or experience it in 360 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ohxAz_rC5k&t=0

-About Alfredo Caro-Salazar-

Alfredo Salazar-Caro is a multimedia artist who works at the intersection of portraiture, installation, documentary, virtual reality, video, and sculpture.

Together with William Robertson, Salazar-Caro conceived the Digital Museum of Digital Art, a groundbreaking project that functions as a virtual institution and a virtual reality exhibition platform dedicated to the promotion and distribution of new media art. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in exhibitions such as Dreamlands at the Whitney Museum, New York; The Wrong Biennale in São Paulo; New Normal at The Hangar, Beirut and Supa Salon, Istanbul; Die Ungerahmte Welt at the Haus der elektronischen Künste Basel; Siggraph Asia, Bangkok; and 1Mes1Artista, Mexico City, among others. His work has been featured in publications such as Leonardo, Cultured Magazine, Art F City, Vice Magazine and Creators Project.

Learn more at http://salazarcaro.com/

Follow him @tmvrtx

The Art of Animating Objects: Neil Mendoza, Artist Oct 17, 2019

Show notes

In this episode we speak with Neil Mendoza, self-described "maker of stuff," about his humorous art inventions which poke fun and draw attention to contemporary culture and social issues. These include a fish-controlled hammer that smashes miniatures of human things, a knife orchestra, and a hamster powered drawing machine just to name a few. Tune in to hear more about Neil's wacky inventions and his reflections on tech art and contemporary culture.

-About Neil Mendoza-

Neil Mendoza’s work combines sculpture, electronics and software to bring inanimate objects and spaces to life. By decontextualizing objects with technology and vice versa, the constituent parts of his work can be looked at in a new ways. Using this medium, he explores themes of the absurd, the humorous, the futile and the surreal. He has an MA in math and computer science from Oxford University and an MFA in design media art from UCLA and has taught classes on art and technology at Stanford and UCLA.

His artwork has been exhibited by AND Festival, Arena 1 Gallery, The Barbican, BBC Big Screens, The Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, Currents New Media Festival, The Exploratorium, ISEA, Kinetica, Minnesota Street Projects, Oi Futuro, PICNIC Festival, The Museum of London, The Nottingham Playhouse, YouFab, Young Projects Gallery, The Science Museum, The V&A and Watermans among others.

He has created digital artworks and installations for a wide range of clients including Accenture, Adidas, Adobe, AntiVJ, Arcade Studios, Audi, Bentley, Brother, Burton Snowboards, Doritos, Ford, Guild LA, HTC, IBM, Jason Bruges Studio, LCF, The Light Surgeons, Local Projects, Moving Brands, New Angle, Nokia, Nuit Sonores, O2, Orange, Poke, Swatch, Universal Everything, Wieden & Kennedy and Wired Magazine. He also co-founded the art collective is this good?.

Learn more at http://www.neilmendoza.com/

Follow him @neilmendoza

The Art of Digital Activism: Ari Melenciano, Interdisciplinary Artist Oct 10, 2019

Show notes

Ari Melenciano is an interdisciplinary artist using tech to underscore racial dynamics and alter our experiences in reality. She is the founder of Afrotectopia, a new media festival championing black artists, activists, and designers working with technology in creative and innovative ways. Today Ari speaks with us on her current projects, shares her thoughts about tech and the limitations faced when using tech-based tools, and dives into the trajectory of Afrotectopia now entering its 3rd year in 2020.

-About Ari Melenciano-

Ari Melenciano is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist. Her research lies at the intersections of human-computer interactive technologies, social impacts of technology, culture, sound/audio-visuality, experimental pedagogy and speculative design.

Ari is the founder of the social institution, Afrotectopia, most commonly experienced via their annual New Media Arts, Culture and Technology Festival.

She is currently an adjunct professor at NYU teaching in the Interactive Telecommunications Graduate Program (ITP) and Photography undergraduate department. She is also a consultant for NYC’s Department of Education, helping to build STEAM curriculum that is culturally relevant.

She is currently incubating audiovisual experimental work at CultureHub in their arts and technology residency, and at New Inc (the first museum-led incubator) in the Experiments in Arts and Technology track in partnership with Rhizome and Bell Labs.

Learn more at http://www.ariciano.com/

Follow her @ariciano

The Art of Digital Engagement: Artists Bailey Hikawa & Scotty Wagner of Emotional.Store Oct 03, 2019

Show notes

Bailey Hikawa and Scotty Wagner's Emotional.Store brings to life ridiculous scenarios fully rooted in contemporary culture's addiction to digital engagement and our increasingly digitally and physically hybridized world. Through comedic storytelling, Bailey and Scotty's large scale, multimedia projects explore, and poke fun at our phone dependency, angst around free WiFi, our relationship with screens and entertainment, and the emergence of alternate personalities online. In this episode, the two share Emotional.Store's origin story, discuss the topics performances like 100 Year Plan and Trial Child address, and share their thoughts on free WiFi, commercials, smartphones, and Kusama.

You can listen to the full Emotional.Store Kusama Song featured in this episode by visiting: https://soundcloud.com/emotional-store/post-infinity

-About Emotional.Store-

Emotional.Store creates large scale, multimedia projects that explore the newly forming collective consciousness brought about by the union of the physical with the virtual.

Through comedic storytelling, magical language and technological seduction, Emotional.Store projects weave audience members through a viscerally weird conversation around the interplay between systems that drive technological progress and the phenomenology of engagement in a digitally and physically hybridized world.

Emotional.Store is the collaborative duo Bailey Hikawa and Scotty Wagner.

Learn more at https://emotional.store/

Follow Emotional.Store @emotional_store

The Art of Quantifying Humanity: Ani Liu, Artist Sep 27, 2019

Show notes

Ani Liu uses scientific processes to create art pieces that delve into the diverse aspects of humanity and our ever-evolving culture. These fringe art experiments have taken the form of biologically-modified plants, mind controlled sperm, a "forced" happiness lab (using science to induce positive feelings), and much, much more. Through all these art explorations, Ani questions, in this technologically mediated age, what does it mean to be human?

-About Ani Liu-

Ani Liu is a research-based artist working at the intersection of art & science.

Her work examines the reciprocal relationships between science, technology and their influence on human subjectivity, culture, and identity.

Ani's work has been presented internationally, and featured on National Geographic, VICE, Mashable, Gizmodo, TED, Core77, PCMag, FOX and WIRED. Her work has been shown at Ars Electronica, the Queens Museum Biennial, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Asian Art Museum, MIT Museum, MIT Media Lab, Mana Contemporary, Harvard University, and Shenzhen Design Society.

She is the winner of the Princeton Arts Fellowship (2019-2021), the S&R Washington Prize (2018), the YouFab Global Creative Awards (1st place, 2018), the Biological Art & Design Award (2017). She is currently teaching at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and is on critique panels at Harvard, Dartmouth, MIT, University of Pennsylvania, NYU, UNC Charlotte, Pratt, Parsons. At MIT, she is on the committee of Art Scholars.

Ani has a B.A. from Dartmouth College, a Masters of Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and a Master of Science from MIT Media Lab.

Ani continually seeks to discover the unexpected, through playful experimentation, intuition, and speculative storytelling. Her studio is based in New York City.

Learn more about Ani at studio@ani-liu.com

Follow here @ani.liu.studio

The Art of Digital Preservation: Morgan Kessler, Media Collections Manager, Los Angeles County Museum of Art Sep 19, 2019

Show notes

One of the biggest challenges facing media artists today is the concept of preservation. Any work of art needs to be restored, touched up and preserved to last over time. But with rapidly evolving technology, it's become hugely necessary to regularly maintain and put systems in place to keep tech-art alive and functioning as it should. In this episode, we speak with Morgan Kessler, Media Collections Manager at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) who oversees the preservation of the museum’s collection of Time-Based art.

Artworks Discussed in this Episode:

Mungo Thomson, Composition for Marimba, 2016

Nam June Paik, Video Flag Z, 1986

-About Morgan Kessler-

Morgan Kessler has been working with museums and artists as an Audio Visual Specialist since 2008. She joined LACMA in 2012 as a Time-Based Media Technician in the Gallery Media department. In her current role as Media Collections Manager, she is charged with the care of the museum’s collection of Time-Based artworks.

You can tweet Morgan @IamtheMogie

The Art of Time & Wonder: Alicia Eggert, Interdisciplinary Artist Sep 12, 2019

Show notes

Often, when we think about the intersection of art and tech our minds wander to innovations like artificial intelligence, augmented reality, projection mapping, etc. In this episode, new SOTA host, Gabriel Barcia-Colombo speaks with interdisciplinary artist, Alicia Eggert on technology as a medium by which she explores our understanding of time, language, and everyday abstractions we take for granted. How do we measure "now"? What is "eternity"? Together the two also touch upon Alicia's current experiments in interactive art underscoring the importance of collaboration and connectivity, and how her creative process is influenced by her childhood growing up within a Pentecostal family.

-About Alicia Eggert-

Alicia is an interdisciplinary artist whose work focuses on the relationship between language, image and time. Alicia's work has been exhibited at notable institutions nationally and internationally, including the CAFA Art Museum in Beijing, the Triennale Design Museum in Milan, the Corning Museum of Glass in New York, the Amsterdam Light Festival, the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA2012) at the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History in New Mexico, Sculpture By the Sea in Sydney, Australia, and many more. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at Galeria Fernando Santos (Porto, Portugal), The MAC (Dallas, TX), T+H Gallery (Boston, MA), Harvard Medical School (Boston, MA), and Artisphere (Arlington, VA). Alicia’s work is represented by Galeria Fernando Santos in Porto, and Liliana Bloch Gallery in Dallas.

Alicia is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including a TED Fellowship, a Washington Award from the S&R Foundation, a Direct Artist Grant from the Harpo Foundation, an Artist Microgrant from the Nasher Sculpture Center, and an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Maine Arts Commission. She has been an artist in residence at Google Tilt Brush, Sculpture Space, True/False Film Festival, and the Tides Institute and Museum of Art. Her work has been featured in The Washington Post, The Houston Chronicle, The Dallas Morning News, BBC Future, Vulture, and publications such as Typoholic: Material Types in Design, Foundations of Digital Art and Design, and Elements and Principles of 4D Art & Design.

Alicia earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Interior Design from Drexel University in 2004, and a Masters of Fine Arts in Sculpture/Dimensional Studies from Alfred University in 2009. She is currently a Presidential Early Career Professor of Studio Art and the Sculpture Program Coordinator in the College of Visual Arts & Design at the University of North Texas. She lives with her son, Zephyr, in Denton, Texas.

Learn more at https://aliciaeggert.com/nav/about.html

Follow her @APlaceintheUniverse

Introducing Our New Host: Gabriel Barcia-Colombo Sep 05, 2019

Show notes

State of the Art Founder Ethan James Appleby returns to introduce our new host, Gabriel Barcia-Colombo (aka Gabe), and SOTA's return to its roots primarily as an art + tech podcast. Gabe was previously a guest on the podcast, back in 2018 in episode 48 "The Art of Collecting Memories". Together they discuss Gabe's latest projects and where he plans on taking the podcast.

You can email Gabe at gabe@thestateoftheart.org

-About Gabriel Barcia-Colombo-

Gabriel Barcia-Colombo is a mixed media artist whose work focuses on collections, memorialization and the act of leaving one's digital imprint for the next generation. His work takes the form of video sculptures, immersive performances, large scale projections and vending machines that sell human DNA. His work plays upon this modern exigency in our culture to chronicle, preserve and wax nostalgic, an idea which Barcia-Colombo renders visually by “collecting” human portraits on video.

Gabriel was commissioned to be the first digital artist to show work at the New Fulton Terminal Stop with the MTA Arts & Design program in New York City. His work has been featured in the Volta, Scope, and Art Mrkt art fairs, Victoria & Albert Museum as well as Grand Central Terminal and the New York Public Library. He recently received an Art and Technology grant from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art where he created "The Hereafter Institute," a company that questions the future of death rituals and memorials and their relationship to technology. His work is part of the permanent collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Gabriel served as a member of the artist advisory board at the New York Foundation for the Arts, as well as the education committee member at the Museum of Art and Design. In 2012 Gabriel gave a TED talk entitled "Capturing Memories in Video Art," and in 2014 he gave another entitled "My DNA Vending Machine" and was awarded a Senior TED fellowship.

In 2016 Gabe founded Bunker.nyc a pop up gallery showcasing emerging art made with technology. Bunker became the first pop up digital art gallery to open in the Sotheby's Auction House in New York Summer 2017. Gabe is a New York Foundation for the Arts grant awardee and faculty member at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.

Learn more about Gabe at https://www.gabebc.com/

Follow him @GabeBC

Goodbye Herm Aug 30, 2019

Show notes

In this laid back discussion with the crew, Host Andrew Herman (Herm) reflects on his time at State of the Art as he says goodbye to podcasting—for now. Together we share reflections on hitting 100 episodes, how the podcast has evolved, thoughts on AI Art, and Herm goes on a ride in Ethan's time machine.

AI Art with Camila Magrane, Multimedia Artist Aug 22, 2019

Show notes

We continue our exploration into AI art this time speaking with San Francisco-based artist, Camila Magrane, whose recent project, OSMA, combines artificial intelligence and social media with plant-life.

-About Camila Magrane-

Camila Magrane is a multimedia artist originally from caracas, venezuela. having a father from the us and a mother from venezuela, she grew up alternating between both countries. Being fully exposed to two different cultures gave her a greater understanding of what it means to have various perspectives.

After graduating from film school in caracas, she moved back to san francisco where she freelanced as an editor and camera operator, working on a wide range of fictional films, documentaries, and music videos. camila later moved on to work in the game industry as a cinematic artist.

Most recently, camila has been exploring the involvement of technology and interactivity in art. this has driven her to obtain a bachelor of science in computer science with a concentration in game development. She continues to hone her skills as a creative coder through the creation of interactive videos, installations and games.

She has been most noted for the creation of her “digital photogram collages” where she has established a postmodern aesthetic by combining traditional darkroom techniques with the use of digital tools.

Learn more at https://www.camilamagrane.com/

Follow here @CamilaMagrane

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