Winter Open Studios: Experimental Media

Home  •  Queered Technology and Speculative Design  •  Art and Electronics  •  Animation  •  Drawing with Code  •  Art Book Object

Queered Technology and Speculative Design
Instructor: Lark Alder (they/them)

What does it mean to ‘queer’ something? Expanding this term's meaning beyond gender and sexuality, ‘to queer’ is to question, challenge, subvert, and reimagine social norms and structures of power. In this course, we will build from queer theory to consider invisibilized assumptions and biases in everyday objects, then design technologies that propose new ways of being. 

For example: What would a clock look like if it were designed for a world without capitalist notions of productivity? Students will create three electronic artworks using Arduino microcontrollers, sensors, light, motors, and sound. Equipment kits will be mailed to each student and tutorials will provide fundamental instruction in electronics and programming. This is an introductory art course with no prerequisites.

Queer technology
As a studio Art & Technology class, this course prompts students to engage *critically and queerly* with technology as an artistic medium. The term “queer technology” asks us to reconsider the ways we think about technology itself. Instead of ascribing to the notion that technology continuously advances and improves our quality of life, we will look at ways technology perpetuates and often augments systems of oppression. Rather than prioritizing productivity, efficiency, and convenience, we will explore spaces where technology fails, slows, subverts, critiques, and is used for unexpected purposes.

Speculative Design
This course regards artistic vision as an *indispensable* tool for social change. Through the lens of Xenofeminism, students will invent new/speculative technologies that empower targeted groups across race, gender, sexuality, class, ability, etc. Taking inspiration from Afrofuturism and queer utopian practice, students will create speculative art projects that imagine the future(s) they want to see. 

Functionally, the playing mechanism is the direct opposite of a traditional piano, where the player must strike a single key for it to play a note. Both the queer and traditional pianos can both accomplish the same things—they can play the same melodies. The difference is that the queer piano takes a different route to producing music and “thinks about” it in a different way. While simple, single line melodies are typically beginner-friendly pieces on a traditional piano because they require the player to strike fewer keys, chordal pieces are in fact much simpler on the queer piano because several notes are playing without intervention. However, the need to hold down multiple buttons at once poses somewhat of a challenge. In order to play “Mary Had A Little Lamb,” the player must always hold down four buttons, but change which button is the “free” button, which requires more coordination than striking single keys on a traditional piano.  The buttons dig into the fingertips, and more force is needed overall to keep notes muted for long durations.

All of these things are a reflection of what it means to be queer (as a human, not a piano). To me, queerness is a different way of existence compared to the heteronormative narrative we are all fed as children through society and media. However, queer or not, we all live in the same world and navigate the same basic human experience. Just as both pianos can play the same music, all people exist and carve out lives together on Earth. These existences are not all identical when it comes to the minutiae, though. Being queer is more work because society does not offer queer people the same easy paths, example stories, or role models that it offers cis-het folks. As a result, being queer provides a different, richer experience of the world, as one cannot blindly follow predetermined narratives. It is more effort to hold down the buttons of the queer piano to keep the notes muted, and it is more effort to accept one’s queerness when it is explicitly labeled an abomination, or to know how to interact with other queer people, or to have relationship experiences when there are so few queer stories in media. So, while a queer person may hit all the same life milestones as a non-queer person (owning property, having a long-term partner, holding down a fourty-year career), the difficulty of doing so is higher for queer people, much the same as I can play “Ode to Joy” on both a traditional and queer piano, but with varying degrees of difficulty. 

Naturally
Yousif Mohsen (he/him)

In our capitalistic way of living, we’re taught early on that humans are selfish, motivated by their own success, and are competitive. Yet, at our most natural state we are “a social species that relies on cooperation to survive and thrive” (The Cooperative Human). Collaboration and community values are innate, with studies finding that, “children as young as six years old can spontaneously find ways to collaborate to maintain a shared, limited resource” (The Cooperative Human). In our most natural state, we aren’t selfish, but a species that is “social” and “collaborative.” I think that to a certain degree, we don’t even truly believe the selfish myth perpetuated by capitalistic values. Popular media constantly emphasizes that in times of need, we band together into a group. When a zombie apocalypse happens, or we’re launched into a deserted planet, or even when a weird entity that makes it so you can’t open your eyes outdoors takes over,  popular media tells us that it's communities that survive. Why is it that we only emphasize the value of community in the most dire circumstances? I wanted to design a project centered around community emphasis beyond dire times. This app uses speculative design to imagine a utopic future where we reimagine what is possible for our way of living in a distant, yet very plausible future. What would the world look like if we stopped believing the capitalistic myths of selfishness and became one with our community? What if the individual was no longer an individual, but a piece of the whole? Learn more
 

Watch and Learn
Michael Pascal (he/him)

Technology has always been viewed as a tool to aid an individual in one way or another; yet such narrative often falls prey to one simple challenge: the accessibility of technology. In our time’s climate emergency, access to these assistive tools are needed more than ever. Just as the storms and the floods do not discriminate between who they harm, why should technology discriminate between who it helps? In this project, the future’s new digital assistant is born, providing users from all demographics with information essential to survival. This device does not aim to be efficient, nor uniform. It doesn’t aim to be pretty, nor demand constant updates. It serves to be there, to be accessible, and to be freed from any notions of profit or gain.

Readings on the ambient conditions, like temperature and humidity, provide the user with the information they need to prepare their day and stay safe from harm. With this information in mind, storage at the rear of the device can then be stocked with essential survival items, like sunscreen, gauze, and medication. This will be the future’s new multi-tool, aiding the user in not only the physical resources to complete a task, but the data necessary to make educated decisions in a newer, more dangerous world. Learn more
 

Saudades da Simbiose
Ulo Freitas (he/him)

Over the past few centuries, indigenous cultures and languages have been lost over time due to the long-lasting effects of colonization. Within all of these lost cultures and languages is so much lost knowledge, specifically about the way of life. Many of these cultures lived in symbiosis with the Earth, rather than stripping the Earth of its precious materials and resources for capitalistic gains. 

When talking to my parents about their childhood in Angola, they emphasized how being able to hang on to small pieces of pre-colonial Angolan culture allowed them to live alongside the Earth. Take the example of medicine; my mother and other relatives have always questioned the constant use of pharmaceuticals in the United States and around the world because they grew up relying on the plants that grew in the Earth. Because of this, my mother expressed how she could easily identify which plants could be used for medicinal purposes and which couldn’t. Growing up in this way where you’re living off of the Earth allows you to have a deeper connection and greater knowledge of the Earth, however, this isn’t the current way of life in today’s tech-dominated world. 

My project explores a future where these cultures that lived in symbiosis with the Earth and have been lost can be combined with today’s ever-advancing technology, but in a way where neither one has to be lessened. In this future, these cultures and technology can not only coexist but thrive off of each other to be the best they can be. For this project, I focused specifically on Angolan/ pre-colonial Angolan culture which is why there are some Portuguese words involved. The title itself, “Saudades da simbiose”, describes the longing for this symbiotic lifestyle with the Earth and these cultures. Learn more
 

Only Plants
Erin McCoy (she/her)

Only fans has played an interesting role in sex work’s transition to ecommerce. Namely, Only fans serves as “a form of empowerment, entrepreneurialism, and an aesthetic mode of influence” [1] for its users, while also forcing one’s sexual identity and gender to conform to tropes and methodology that best fits the necessities of late stage capitalism. Sex work, at its truest, is an exchange of energies between two consenting parties, and online platforms have made this exchange much safer for sex workers. Online sex work platforms have also created an unrealistic expecation of intimacy and authenticity, wtih strict gender and sexuality stereotypes. In the past year, we’ve also seen Only Fans commandeered by influencers looking to make quick money off of the platform, disrupting the system cultivated and cared for by sex workers who popularized the platform.

I wanted to imagine plants had a sexual identity, and to create a “sex work” network for plants. Plants have been given gender by humans, but that gender identity isn’t easily derived from a plant's physical presentation. While some plants have been tied to human sexuality and gender expression (for example, the Pansy Craze), there are no preconceived stereotypes or tropes given to sexual interaction between plants. Only plants explores what a sex work platform would feel like, outside of capitalist notions and expectations of sexuality and gender. Learn more

Art and Electronics
Instructor: Anja Ulfeldt 
TA: Liz Maelane

A studio course in contemporary art production that incorporates electronic media. Students work with basic circuits for creating mobile, illuminated, and responsive works of art. Some of the topics covered are: soldering; construction of basic circuits; elementary electronics theory; and contemporary electronic art.

AJ Rossman, A Sunny Day at the Pool ; Cardboard, aluminum foil, stepper motor

Sunlight is filtered through a skylight such that only a small amount is let through. Then, aluminum foil (moving by stepper motor) reflects this light onto the wall across from it, creating a pattern of light alike to the patterns formed on the bottom of a pool on a sunny day. This installation symbolizes the difference between perception and reality, while also creating a feeling of awe and wonder in the audience.

View A Sunny Day at the Pool

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Drawing with Code
Instructor: Camille Utterback
TA: Oleg Savunov

In Drawing with Code, students learn to use software coding as both a technical and conceptual means to making artwork. What are the differences and similarities between drawing with traditional methods and “drawing” with code? How do artists compose a set of software instructions to create visually appealing and conceptually meaningful works? Some issues we explored were the role of abstraction, time, and interactivity in our works. We also asked how we might explore issues of power and agency through code based systems. This page includes video output of artworks from the class. For interactive works, a link to download and run the applications is included. 

Art Book Object
Instructor: Gail Wight
TA: Tina Kashiwagi

This mixed introductory and upper level studio course explores contemporary aesthetic interpretations of the book as an art object. Students learn to use both traditional and digital tools and techniques for creating artists' books, and integrate those into final works of art. The course familiarizes students with basic bookbinding processes and forms, as well as various modes of printing and production that facilitate limited artist editions. In addition to making books, we view numerous artists' books in the Bowes Art & Architecture Library collection as well as the collection of the instructor, and meet with practicing artists and book makers. Students create a number of small books, each focused on a particular process but using content of their choice. Upper level students propose and create a more fully evolved final project involving at least one bookbinding process independently researched in consultation with the instructor.