Since the Epoch

Digital + Media Graduate Student Exhibition

Exhibition: Friday March 10th - Sunday March 12th

Opening: Friday March 10th

Boston Cyberarts is pleased to present Since the Epoch, an exhibition of work from students in the Digital + Media graduate program at the Rhode Island School of Design. The title of the exhibition is a reference to Unix time, a widely used computer timekeeping system based on counting the seconds passed since the advent of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Often termed the epoch, Thursday January 1, 1970 remains a technical and metaphorical crossing point—marking a change in how our society measures, and perhaps ultimately experiences, the passage of time.

While the work in this exhibition ranges a wide variety of media—from performance to advanced CGI—a reoccurring theme is the confrontation and exploration of time as it relates to digital systems. In Xibaba, by Joseph Winograd, the now ubiquitous timeline of the GIF is exploded into three dimensions. A colorful image sequence by the artist is transformed into a physical animation, a geometric structure built of lenticular prints slowly spinning at eye level. Similarly, in Kristen Shea’s Poetic Simulations, the tensions between the digital and temporal realms are exploited. Short loops of timeless CGI worlds are extended into physical space through projection onto sculptural counterparts. Her video poems, comprised of frames per second, briefly interact with the longer timeframe of cement, wood and metal.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Ben Aron is an interdisciplinary artist who lives and works in Providence, RI. His work focuses on value, economics, and the existential themes inextricably related. Aron has exhibited his work internationally, and has been involved in a number of public projects—such as Lumen Collective’s Urban Planning: The History of Public vs. Private Space in the Heart of Downtown Boston, and the Billboard Project, where his National Student Debt Clock was displayed on LED roadside billboard in Richmond, VA. He holds a BFA from the Studio for Interrelated Media at the Massachusetts College of Art & Design.

Yakun Chen is a multi-disciplinary artist working with media technologies and physical interactions. Her works were shown in exhibitions in Los Angeles, Providence, New Mexico, and Guangzhou (China). Often times the themes are combined into installations that feature domestic objects, digital legacies, repetitive patterns and convergence of virtuality and reality. Yakun holds a B.A. in Design | Media Art at UCLA and is currently a MFA candidate at RISD.

Evan Daniel is a memorization artist. While the scope of his artistic practice includes the general act of memorization, he uses π as a constant around which to build systems addressing memory. Although he usually makes some mistakes, he regularly practices recalling π from memory to ten thousand digits. Born and raised in New York, he is currently a Digital Media MFA candidate at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). He also received his BFA in Painting from RISD. An emerging artist, he has exhibited, performed, and lectured locally in the Northeast US.

Cody Filardi is an interdisciplinary artist and writer currently based in Providence, RI. She works at the intersection of gaming, feminism, personal documentary and collage.

Jeremiah Johnson is an artist and graduate student at Rhode Island School of Design, majoring in Digital + Media. Previously in the field of video production and motion design, he currently makes works revolving around the intersect of psychology, metaphysics, and the occult.

Xiaohan Li works in multiple media examining self-obliteration via photography, sound, video and installation.

Xiaopeng Qi is an Experimental Artist & Designer who works in a wide range of media, including installation, performance, industrial design, user interface & experience design. As a freelancer, he likes the inspiring and encouraging works and mixing the virtual and real world.

Kristen Shea is an interdisciplinary artist born in Indiana. She received her Bachelors from Purdue University in 2009, her Post-Baccalaureate from School of the Art Institute Chicago in 2016, and is receiving a MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2018. Her work uses CAD, CGI, moving image and sculpture exploring the virtual object and its physical transmutations.

Annie Shu Yun Wan was born in Taichung, Taiwan. She constantly considers the relationship between individual, time and space in her artistic practice, reviewing Human History, Anthropology and Psychology, and using the idea of “drawing” to capture the outline of the connection between human beings and the world. She extends her inner impulse of drawing toward painting, writing, collecting, recording, collage, action, installation, etc. In addition to her independent practice, she is also a member of the art group Duckly Reading Group, which uses writing as a starter to explore the possible interaction between words, visual art and theatre.

Da Wei is a Providence-based interdisciplinary new media artist. Da is interested in visualizing non-viewable, non-objective physical “virtual” phenomena/concepts by using daily transparent materials, 3D printing techniques, projector synchronization and projection mapping techniques. Her sculptural, architectural computer animated light projections, audiovisual video installations and audiovisual 3D animation installations open a conceptual conversation of juxtapositionality of reality vs virtuality and perceptibility vs non-perceptibility. Da holds a BFA in interdisciplinary Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Joe Winograd is a multimedia artist experimenting with handmade digital art. With a background in printmaking, Winograd investigates the role of handcrafted art in the Digital Age. He earned his BFA in Printmaking & Drawing in 2013 at Washington University in St. Louis. He has exhibited physical and digital works all over the world, including the first lenticular GIF exhibitions in London and Paris, at the CHART Art Fair in Copenhagen, and a series of international music festivals. His work has been featured by Tumblr’s Staff Picks, VICE Magazine’s Creators Project, and many other online publications. Joe Winograd is currently based in Providence, Rhode Island while earning an MFA in Digital + Media at Rhode Island School of Design.

PRESS

Since The Epoch by Maryam Yoon, March 12, 2017 Boston Hassle