In June, Rhizome and NEW INC presented works by artists in the 2022-23 Art & Code Track in a culminating exhibition at Dunkunsthalle, a former Dunkin’ Donuts turned art space founded by artist Rachel Rossin in 2022. Earlier this year, Rhizome undertook a curatorial residency in the space, where we presented Internetausdrucker Book store + Reading Room. We are pleased to share documentation of works by the Art & Code members, made up of artists, teachers, technologists, and more, who practiced together over the course of a year to expand ways of thinking about art, technology and the Internet.
Works on view ranged in concept and medium; from an interactive CD-ROM storytelling game, to a poetry commission project first published on Venmo, to glass video sculptures that use the concept of fog as a way to realize liberatory ideas about trans futurity.
The Art & Code showcase was curated by Celine Wong Katzman, who also served as the track’s mentor, and produced by Lauren Goshinski. Special thanks to Rachel Rossin, Vincent Naples, Technical Producer, Tony Tirador, Production Assistant, installers Blake Robbins and Brian Oakes, and docents Paola Ortega Hurtado, Drew Atz, and Sydney Abady.
Herdimas Anggara, RASUK
Herdimas Anggara, RASUK, 2023. Dunkunsthalle’s tiles, GOOgle DOcs, GOOgle Spreadsheet, GOOgle Slides, GOOgle ChrOme, YOuTube, macOS fOlders, macOS files, macOS Preview. Photo: Isaiah Winters.
RASUK embOdies the essence Of spirit pOssessiOn, exerting its influence. Over the cOurse of the past twO years, I have delved deep intO the realm Of live ZOOm desktOp perfOrmances, manipulating and cOnjuring fOrth digital vernaculars. In this prOcess, I twist and distOrt the very fabric Of standard business platfOrms/applicatiOns (GOOgle DOcs and GOOgle Spreadsheet amOng Others), unraveling the threads Of familiarity and shattering precOnceived ideOlOgies embedded within each system. What if, within these ethereal realms, religiOus ecstasy reverberates and resOnates? What if these cOrpOreal pOssessiOns transmute Our perceptiOns Of symbOlic cOnventiOns, such as the user interface? HOw can we fathOm Our true sense Of agency as we navigate these seemingly mundane machines?
Learn more about the Artist’s work
xtine burrough, Paying it Forward
xtine burrough, Paying it Forward, 2023. Video, parchment paper, colored pencil, transfer prints on gessoed hardboard. Photo: Isaiah Winters.
Paying It Forward is a one-cent poetry commission, publishing, and translation project. Participants who submit 166 characters or fewer about the dehumanizing effects of capitalism receive their commission as a one-penny payment on Venmo. This action transforms the payment app into a poetry publishing platform. I translated screenshots of these poems to video and printed ephemera to explore the aesthetic possibilities of combining type, images, sound, and moving content.
Poems in this video are by Anne Bray, Laura Rea, Therefore, Gordon Winiemko, Joshua San Nicolas, AllStreet, Liz Trosper, and Nick Graf.
Jaehoon Choi, 4:00 - 12:00
Jaehoon Choi, 4:00 - 12:00, 2023. Video, desk, piezo microphone, Max 8, mechanical watch, watch maintenance tools. Photo: Isaiah Winters.
In this performance, I assemble and disassemble a mechanical watch over the course of eight hours, from 4pm to midnight. The sound of this process is amplified by a piezo microphone. The performance questions how multi-temporality and multi-relations are embedded in technology.
Jackie Liu, Chao Bing: A Read-Only Memory Experience
Jackie Liu, Chao Bing: A Read-Only Memory Experience, 2023. Web-based game (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, p5.js), Raspberry Pi, monitor, keyboard, mouse, bedroom furniture and objects. Photo: Isaiah Winters.
Chao Bing: A Read-Only Memory Experience is an interactive memoir in the style of a 90s CD-ROM storybook game, presented in a computer desktop environment with real and imaginary items from the artist’s past. The game navigates between narrated storybook scenes and mini-games about childhood memories in a 640x480, point-and-click environment simulated in the browser. Named after a chopped and stir-fried scallion pancake dish, Chao Bing incorporates imagery of scallion pancakes and CD-ROMs into a story about read-only memories, obsolescence, cycles, and the ways we might break (or chop and stir-fry) them through the transformative act of creation.
View the project page on the artist’s website.
John Provencher, haha
80mm ∞, thermal receipt print
haha is a transactional program for a receipt printer. The program is designed to live on the web, allowing users to interact with the script through smart contract transactions in the form of a generative on-chain artwork. Overtime, these transactions accumulate into iterations of potential outputs that the script affords. The installation of this program is an exploration of these transactions in physical space.
Chelsea Thompto, Fog Lights
Chelsea Thompto, Fog Lights, 2023. 3” x 4” x 1.5” (3 objects) Raspberry Pi computers, LCD screens, code (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript), glass panels, and 3D printed cases. Photo: Isaiah Winters.
This work critically interrogates what society holds up as monstrous and looks to one of these figures (fog itself) as an aspirational rather than antagonistic figure. Drawing on work by Susan Stryker around the idea of trans identity and the monstrous, the work questions how subjects are perceived as monstrous and what that process says about the societies that produce them.
Further, the work looks at fog's ability to resist capture, visualization, and control as a way to develop liberatory ideas about trans futurity and embodiment.
Roopa Vasudevan, Intrusive Order (v1)
Roopa Vasudevan, Intrusive Order (v1), 2023. Single-channel video. Photo: Isaiah Winters.
Drawing its title from intrusive thoughts about my own worth and talent, Intrusive Order is based on 15 descriptors that I wrote about myself during various stages of my own experience on the academic job market between 2022 and 2023. The descriptions were repurposed as prompts for AI image generators, and the results were combined with hand drawings, found imagery and photography, and generative animation to expand, reimagine, and problematize them.
Learn more about Intrusive Order
Or Zublasky, Merge Conflicts
Or Zublasky, Merge Conflicts, 2022. Four channel video and digital interface. Photo: Isaiah Winters.
Time Travels: Building a State in the Middle East, 2022. Israeli high school history textbooks.
Staged as a series of video tutorials, Merge Conflicts engages a process of unlearning settler colonial pedagogy through using Git, a software tool for managing multiple versions of digital documents. This work draws on my research into how the peak of the ongoing Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) in 1948 has been taught in Israel. The videos bring together findings from the archive of the Israel Ministry of Education and the Israel State Archive. These are shown alongside Time Travels: Building a State in the Middle East, high school history textbooks with machine-cut interventions.
Watch the digital version of the work.
NEW INC is the first museum-led cultural incubator, which supports a diverse range of creative practitioners with a values-driven program and safe space for gathering and developing creative projects and businesses. Rhizome is pleased to partner with NEW INC for the Art & Code Track, now in its fourth year.
Learn about the Year 10 Art & Code Members.
See Documentation from the Year 8 cohort at Public Works Administration.
Dunkunsthalle is an artist-run museum and project space founded by Rachel Rossin, out of a defunct Dunkin' Donuts in the Financial District. Borrowing from the museum structure of the German 'kunsthalle,' the space mounts historic and contemporary exhibitions, as well as offering educational classes, film screenings and readings.