Stephanie Sassine – Artist Statement

I am a Lebanese Brazilian digital artist who started out with a Bachelor of Science in Graphic Design with an emphasis in Digital Media at the Lebanese American University in Lebanon. I am currently residing in Brooklyn, New York, where I am completing a MFA in Pratt Institute’s Department of Digital Arts with a concentration in Interactive Arts.

My current work is about making the familiar “unfamiliar”, where darker, more hostile subject matter can be teased out of quotidian routine scenarios. Each piece of work tackles an issue that touches me personally, where I express my take on the matter at hand while exposing my personal experiences and emotions. For instance, I represent a certain non-eventful moment or sequence that composites my current life, such as the neighborhood I live in, while revealing through my point of view, hidden layers underlying it. In other terms, I would want one to walk in my shoes and see the world through my eyes.

A manifestation of this is especially enhanced in one of my artworks entitled “B vs. B” (a.k.a. Brooklyn versus Beirut), which is a walk-through of my adopted neighborhood, which as a first impression looks like Google Earth’s Street View, but when one interacts with the screen’s visuals, a hidden layer would be revealed, which portrays what I see and wish for when I look at that element, which is directly related to the nostalgia I feel towards my home country.

Artist Statement Draft

I am a Lebanese Brazilian digital artist who started out with a Bachelor of Science in Graphic Design with an emphasis in Digital Media at the Lebanese American University in Lebanon. I am currently residing in Brooklyn, New York, where I am carrying out a MFA in Digital Arts in Interactive Arts at the Pratt Institute.

My works are about making the familiar “unfamiliar”, the ordinary “unordinary” and the apparent usual routine hostile. Each piece of work tackles a subject matter that touches me personally, and where I express my take on the matter at hand as well as my personal experiences and emotions.

MoMa : Talk To Me exhibition

 

I went to the MoMa to see the “Talk to Me” exhibition. Before talking about anything I have to point out the major cluster of pieces in the tiny overcrowded space, where some of the pieces were not even working, set aside the attack of the QR codes and the DO NOT TOUCH signs on some weird devices on the walls… Getting this out of the way, I am going to show my favorite pieces of that exhibit, but there are so many since there were so many pieces shown, that this post will probably look like the exhibition: small and crowded.

 

Becoming Animal, the interactive performance where each participants would wear one of the 3-headedbeast’s heads (Kerberos) and the heads would “read” and translate each participant’s emotions from their gestures, facial expressions and sounds.

 

I also liked Augmented Shadow, which is an interactive installation where the player would move the blocks on the table to get reactions from the “shadows”, but the story behind it is confusing to understand without reading its flow chart.

 

The Kageo installation, the little shadowed creatures that only live in the shadows of any object, which was shown through a demonstration video, was intriguing since the video said “No Sensors, No Projectors above the table”. They did specify “above the table” which makes the whole difference, since when I first saw it my mind only focused on “no sensors” and “no projectors”, which made me wonder how did they do it? But it was actually done using a webcam, which would detect the object’s shadows, and a hidden projector would make the creatures appear. But even knowing how they did it, I still appreciate the work as much if not more.

 

The SMSlingshot merges an old kid’s weapon/toy with SMS, projection and twitter. The idea is to “shotgun” buildings by marking them with colored splashes of text. The players would choose a building, type a text on the slingshot’s keypad, aim at the building and release, turning the building’s façade into a screen where a splash would appear with the text in it, while the test would appear on twitter simultaneously.

 

Phantom Recorder is the one piece that really moved me emotionally and put me in a state of awe. It’s about an amputee’s sensation that his missing body part is still there and he can still feel it. It’s called the phantom limb, and the phantom recorder basically records the brain’s transmissions through the nerves to this invisible limb, as if the nervous messages transmitted from the brain are getting out in the air where the missing limb is supposed to be, which somehow creates a mass of energy or electricity if I may say, in that area. At least this is what this project made me think of, when I was observing the recordings’ videos.

 

 

Although there are a lot more pieces that were interesting and that I liked, these five pieces were my top favorites, so I will end it here. Next time, probably 1/3^rd of the works should be shown and a better management of the QR codes would make the exhibition a lot better.

LOVID : Lecture at Pratt’s DDA department

Lovid is a team composed of Tali Hinkis (Fine Arts background) and Kyle Lapidus (Enginnering background), who started working together in 2001. They came to Pratt Institute’s DDA department to conduct a lecture. They’re a very interesting couple, they complement each other and we can see that in their works, and the way they talk about their works as well. Their dynamic… Okay I have been trying to avoid saying it but it keeps popping in my mind again and again so I’ll just say it: THEY’RE CUTE! Moving on.

They showed us VideoWear, done in 2003, where each of them wore 7 portable LCD screens, the ones you usually see in cars (note that it wasn’t that popular in 2003). Now that they think about it, the project, which enhanced portable media as in a portable screen where you can watch moving images, was made before the iPod iPad and iPhone ever existed. The project is a glimpse of “the future” where technology would be integrated and embedded in our bodies.

 

 

Then they showed us Sync Armonica (2005), a handmade synthesizer installation that controlled audio as well as video outputs. They performed with it in the Museum of the Moving Image this year 2011. It’s fascinating to see how emitting sound vibes would create images and music!

 

 

They also showed us Network, which is a participatory and collaborative installation, where people have to weave lines of electric wires. The wires conduct also live video from their Sync Armonica project. The final weaved element that resulted after the exhibition was kept as a piece of art.

 

In all their projects, you can distinct the technical work coming from Lapidus and the artistic touch from Hinkis, but one without the other is not Lovid, and it wouldn’t be half as interesting anyway. Also they seem to like to explore the relationship between analog and digital in their works.

Man Bartlett’s talk at Pratt’s DDA

Man’s career path is very interesting and diversified. He went from posing for his dad’s paintings as a kid to being a theater major to being a painter and now I don’t really know how to define what he is but he is an artist. His diversified background in art and the journey that led him to this point today has formed him and helped him find himself. He seems to be a very emotional person and you can see that through his art.

I really liked the lecture he gave, he was interesting and charismatic, and grabbed my attention. I liked his transparency especially reflected through his publishing of his finances on Google docs and the twitter account (@Occupyman) he created for this matter as well!

I also loved his circle artworks, especially the tiny circles. Other works he talked about that I especially liked are performance based. The 24 Hours Port (#24hPort) he performed for the Creative Time (May 2011). He spend 24 hours in Port Authority Bus Terminal in NYC and asked people where they were going and where they are coming from to people in the subway and people online on twitter simultaneously. I also liked the performance he did in August 2010 called 24 Hours Echo (#24hEcho) where he spent 24 hours just repeating what users on twitter using his hashtag or on his project’s website said. This performance takes a lot of patience and endurance, to be able to just sit there and basically become a parrot. I guess he obtained that patience ability from his experiences during his trips to South America.

Summary on readings and viewings

Curating on the Web talks about how museums changed over time and the creation of online virtual museums and QR codes and everything museums are and provide the visitors today, which is merely a replica of the museum products themselves presented like a catalogue or brochure. On the other hand, adaweb is some kind of an online curating website that hosts the works and websites of different artists.

Now let’s explore some works done by different artists.

Trial Raid:

This work is interesting, besides its historical based concept, in the fact that it provides user generated pieces and projects them to the world in real time, and stores the works in archives for the world to see.

The work of Donna Leishman:

I like her work she produces interactive stories that are multipath depending on the user’s choice of path. Her graphic style is also unique which differentiates her from other artists as well. One remark maybe would be that sometimes I don’t understand parts of the story and some interactive elements are not especially interesting to discover.

Game, game, game, and again game:

This game is very unusual it’s very messy and bothering, I guess their point and concept has come across but I don’t like it. I like clean designs so this does not appeal to me at all, and the music is just annoying, and the graphics and elements disturbing annoying and stress me out. I understand this is a success for them because this is exactly what they want the user to feel. But as a game, I don’t like it. As a concept, it’s interesting and different but I would say… never again.

Laborers of Love (LOL):

Besides the subject of this project being some kind of a porn site, the concept is interesting to study. The user has an input, he decides what he wants to see, and he becomes the director of his own fantasy. He writes the storyline and everything he wants, and he submits his request to “LOL”. Meanwhile the “workers” make his fantasy come true by creating it through mash-ups and editing of content already present on the Internet. This is interesting as well in the fact that new jobs have been created.

Activism Art

I found an amazing website called Osocio, which is a some kind of a blog featuring subjectively the best of non-profit advertising and marketing for social causes.

I’m going to point out the top works that got my attention.

First, there is a group of activists for animal rights that did this project called “Stop Poaching Our Rhino“. They also have a YouTube Channel and a Facebook Page. They are fighting for the cause of poaching Rhino’s horns which are made of Keratin. Apparently, some people in China still believe that Rhino horns (a.k.a Keratin) can cure several illnesses, therefore it is stil harvested and rhinos are killed for that. Keratin is also found in our human hair and nails, so this group of activists are collecting hairs and nails and sending them to the embassies of the countries that have these beliefs.

Another interesting work is featured by actress Nikki Reed. It’s called the GIVE A SHIT movement. www.Give-a-Shit.org is about exploring the power of mass consciousness, by sharing what you care about, or what you “give a shit” about, while actually taking a shit! This is an unusual way of creating public awareness about any issue, by accepting people’s busy schedules today, and just taking advantage of a moment of their days to think about global issues that they care about and share it. Here is their Facebook Page.

What follows is a print ad called FIND BILLY done by Missing Children Europe organization (European Federation for Missing and Sexually Exploited Children).

The video below is a strong piece created by Emily Cooper, a graduate from the Royal College of Art in London. She made this animation for the ADVA/Devon County Council (UK) as part of an awareness campaign about domestic violence in schools in Devon County. She used oil paint on glass animation technique to produce this animation short.

 

So many strong pieces are blogged about in this website. Check it out, get inspired: http://osocio.org

Paddy Johnson: Reviewing Digital Media in the Art

Paddy Johnson came to Pratt’s Digital Arts Department to present herself and her work to us students. I had previously read some of her blog posts and reviews on her Art Fag City Blog, but I was still caught off guard by her presentation and her personality.

She is nothing like you would expect to hear while attending a lecture. Put in a few words, she frantically curses in almost all her sentences, and she told us all about how she failed as a gallery assistant after graduating from her college degree. All that to get to the point where she started blogging and how she got good at it and what makes her unique in it is her different persona and direct words. For instance, the blog post that put her in the spotlight was Gallery Goer Asks The Question: What Is This Shit?

She showed us some other blog posts that got a special attention in Art Fag City, and she also showed us how she is making money from her blog, even if it’s still not as much as she would like it to. Besides advertisements, she made over 11,000 $ raising money using Kickstarter so she could produce a record called “The Sound of Art“. She then premiered the record in New York and Toronto, with live performances: http://www.artfagcity.com/celebrating-five-years-of-art-sounds-in-new-york/

Besides her work, her presentation had a depressing impact on me for some reason, because all she talked about was her years of failed trials to work as a gallery assistant, and how she still lives like a student even now with her blog and popularity… so I’m not sure how much this part was inspiring, but I guess it would be inspiring for us to try to change that, a.k.a #OccupyWallStreet maybe?

Occupy Wall Street

Click here to see my pictures of Occupy Wall Street

We went to the Zuccoti Park in Wall Street to “visit” the OccupyWallStreet demonstration. They have been there for almost a month now, some of them sleeping there and others that come and go whenever they can. Although there are a lot of political demonstrations in my home country, Lebanon, I had never attended a public demonstration, mostly because on one hand its political parties’ affiliations, and on the other hand, because of safety issues. But attending WallStreet’s Occupation was a whole other experience even though I don’t really have another one, I know how it goes in my country. It’s true that it gets rough and problems arise at OWS, but when I went, it was a very enriching experience.

They have formed some kind of community, and although it might look disorganized from the outside, it is actually very well thought out. They have access to free food and drinks, the artists design the posters and leaflets and give them out to people for free, and they even have a library! That library is called “The People’s Library”. People donate books and they mark them with the “OWS Occupy Wall Street” tag. The purpose of the library is for anyone to take a book, enjoy it and put it back.

The OWS “community” naturally took the shape of a communistic community with no specific leader, where everyone shares everything and they all have a voice.

It is filled with a mix of artists, performers and musicians, hippies, punk, and people of all kinds of interests and cultures. It really represents “The People” or the “99%” as they call themselves. OWS is really inspiring, I don’t need to say that, the whole world said it already, since more and more countries have their own OWS now.

 

 

 

Relationship between Stephenson and Baudrillard

I think the link between Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation and Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash lies in the hyper reality created in Snow Crash called the Metaverse where all characters “live” in or switch between the real reality and the metaverse, and they get confused by which is which at some point, which represents exactly what Baudrillard is talking about. Snow Crash could represent the world we live in today metaphorically on one part taking into consideration Baudrillard’s theories, but really literally on another hand considering the use of the hyper real world that we live in online.