The Vanishing Portrait series is a new body of work that explores the discrimination in image-making technologies and social media. Each video comments on a specific bias and questions why today’s technologies are racist. Furthermore, the work questions why are these technologies brought to the public with such systematic errors without the consideration of minorities?
We must look to the programmers, designers, and the tech companies of why they have left out groups of people. The overall representation of minorities in tech companies is quite discerning. Only 2% of people working in Google are black, 3.4% in Twitter and 4% in Microsoft. Part of the issue is there should be more diversity of people working in the tech sector but the problem goes much deeper. Social media reflects the public consciousness. We must as a collective, understand how images, tags, and interactions online can impact a persons’ identity.
The Vanishing Portrait Series is to bring awareness of how errors in today’s technologies can have severe outcomes on female minorities. By continuing the history of whitewashing portraiture, we as a collective, are continuing the history of discrimination. What happens to the future generation of women who see pornographic material when they search for themselves (“Asian Girls”)? This not only effects their identity, but it also effects society’s perception of the female body.
Mutual Reality: Art on the Edge of Technology
Jun 8 – Oct 6, 2019
https://smoca.org/exhibition/mutual-reality-art-on-the-edge-of-technology/
In the 21st century, each of us—often unknowingly—leave a digital footprint in everything we do from texting to a simple internet search. This exhibition presents the multiple ways in which we, as users, interact with an artwork and the response or output the artwork provides in return.
In the 21st century, each of us—often unknowingly—leave a digital footprint in everything we do from texting to a simple internet search. This exhibition presents the multiple ways in which we, as users, interact with an artwork and the response or output the artwork provides in return. These interactions are meant to get the viewer thinking not only about the traces we leave behind, but the effects we have on technology. In this important moment in time, humans and technology are evolving together and interactive art exemplifies this relationship. This intimate level of engagement with an artwork opens the opportunity to shift the viewer’s perspective on the meaning and boundaries of art itself.
The work of pioneering artists in the field of interactive digital art will be on view alongside emerging artists on the cutting edge of technology and art, including work by a local artist using virtual reality. The nine artists included in the exhibition are: Ernest Edmonds, Charis Elliott, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Marpi, Aakash Nihalani, Mimi Onuoha, Purring Tiger (Aaron Sherwood and Kiori Kawai), Daniel Rozin, and Tiffany Trenda.
Organized by Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. Curated by Curator of Programming Julie Ganas.