Presenters 2020

“#MFGA: Make Floors Great Again Using IFTTT for Activist Art”

Janna Ahrndt received her MFA in Electronic and Time Based Art from Purdue University and is currently the Visiting Assistant Professor of Digital art at Indiana University. She is a part of a wave of new media artists rejecting the notion that craft and technology are directly opposed. Her work explores how deconstructing everyday technologies can be used to question larger oppressive systems and create a space for participatory political action. Her activist and social art practice seeks to blur the lines between the materiality of craft and the digital realm of new media technologies to create socio-political interventions. She has presented research on the use of DIY electronics as a medium for participatory political art at ISEA 2019 in Gwangju South Korea and facilitated workshops in collaboration with the Science Gallery in Melbourne Australia, the Science Gallery in Dublin Ireland and the NEoN Re@ct festival.​

“They Don’t Make Emojis for How I Feel, But Maybe They Do.”

Eric D. Charlton is an American artist originally from the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in Western Pennsylvania. Charlton’s work is exploring the desire for meaning and the lack of human understanding on a cosmic scale to the minutiae of the everyday. He embraces an open studio practice that centers around a broad definition of objecthood and the absurd acts of humans trying to make sense of the world. He earned his MFA at Syracuse University. Charlton has been the recipient of residencies at Tuner Semester Residency in Los Angeles, CA, Kimmel Harding Nelson, Nebraska City, NE, as well as Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts, Farmington, ME. He has exhibited internationally, including the 2019 Miami University Young Sculptors Competition at Hiestand Galleries, Miami University, Oxford, OH, Das Giftraum, Berlin, Germany, Bratislava, Slovakia, Monte Vista Projects Los Angeles, CA, The Sculpture Center, Cleveland, OH, and Kathryn Schultz Gallery, Cambridge, MA. Charlton currently works at Allegheny College in Meadville, PA, as an instructor of Ceramics, Sculpture, and Digital Art, as well as 3D Technical support for students.

“Good-for-nothing”

Nicholas Kersulis’ practice applies systems of organization to cultural artifacts through formal devices such as montage, accretion, and erasure, and through the conventions of exhibition display and graphic design. Built into the resultant system is an implicit absurdity that questions the objectivity of the system itself—a systematic critique of systems in the form of a system. Currently Kersulis is exploring these concepts and maneuvers within the contexts of non-physical spaces. Theoretically the internet is an infinite space, but our engagement with its contents is finite and defined by our individual identity and by our physical interactions with it. Limited by these real-life, physical engagements with the ‘space’ of the internet, the limitlessness becomes an illusion.

Nathan Matteson’s design practice is fiercely anti-disciplinary and ruthlessly collaborative. It operates on the principle that the best outcomes are the result of the worst arguments amongst the most people. As a general rule he maintains a state of displeasure, but less so when his work engages with the gaps, moments, mistakes, and fictive spaces between things. Matteson does not care what those things might be, nor what medium, material, or mess from which they are constructed. He rejects the notion that design is able to offer solutions to problems and instead insists that problems are the output of any worthwhile design practice. He hopes to leave behind a series of interesting ones.

“The Work Process and Thoughts in Uncertain Pixel Project”

“I think it is the most important yet difficult task of art and science to look back on the present life and the nobility of life against the inevitable death of life.”-Heesoo-
Uncertain Pixel Project is a collaboration between Heesoo Agnes Kim performance-based video artist, and Sungil Daniel Kim, who works on media art based on photography and computer programming. Through the interaction collaboration of the artist and the engineer, the project shares creative ideas and work styles, expands the scope and depth of thinking, and elevates the common values of looking at the world to contemporary art. Heesoo received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Whitecliffe College(2009) and her Master of Fine Arts from Seoul National University with her thesis “Beyond The Gaze Formative Function Of I (2016).” Sungil received his Bachelor of Science (2006) and Master of Science (2009) from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) with his thesis “Approximation of functions and their derivatives by generalized sampling series.”

“Emotional Connection from the perspective of Brain Science”

Changwoo Yoon is an artist and AI (Artificial Intelligence) scientist. He received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Florida, US. Currently he is a principal researcher at ETRI (Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute) and professor at UST (University of Science and Technology). His current research interests include Brain Science, Artificial Intelligence, Wearable computing, and IoT. His individual direction in art is a convergence with brain science and AI technology. The initial approach to convergence is finding out the mechanism of how people see and feel through brain science and trying to apply the found facts to artwork.

“The Bible: Space Zero Enter Lowercase OLO”

Heui Tae Yoon is an artist based in New York and Korea. He received his MFA from Pratt Institute and his BA from Marymount Manhattan College. He has exhibited his works in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seoul, etc.

“Biological Materials as New Media Art: A New Uncanny Valley?”

Lucy Winnington is a PhD candidate in Art History at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Her research interests include collaborations between contemporary art and science and technology, gothic theory and posthumanism.

“Piled Up Archives”

Sora Woo is a visual artist and photographer based in Brooklyn, New York. Her works concentrate on observing the spatial relationship between humans and places. Woo is interested in discovering the threads of human interaction and what occurs after the absence of a person. Woo’s photographs capture a moment in the slow process of the passage of time. She not only depicts the passing of time but also points out the physical and spiritual aspects of the “Irreversible”. Sora received her MFA from Pratt Institute, New York in 2018 and BFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York in 2015.