Vellum LA x Feral File Present: Simulation Sketchbook: Works in Process
A group exhibition curated by Jesse Damiani exploring the various forms “sketches” can take for artists working in new media and digital art.
Powered by Tezos.
By John Gerrard
Opening Reception:
Thursday, October 20, 7-9 PM
On View at Vellum LA:
October 21 - October 23, 2022
Vellum LA
7673 Melrose Ave
Los Angeles CA 90046
Feral File and Vellum LA are pleased to announce Simulation Sketchbook: Works in Process, a group show and physical pop-up exhibition at Vellum LA, curated by Jesse Damiani, which explores the various forms “sketches” can take for artists working in new media and digital art. The exhibition is powered by Tezos and will also include an LED billboard campaign in Downtown Los Angeles.
Simulation Sketchbook features 11 new artworks from:
Alida Sun - Anne Spalter - Behnaz Farahi - Botto - David OReilly - IX Shells (Itzel Yard) - John Gerrard - Mimi Onuoha - Monica Rizzolli - Qianqian Ye - Reeps One (Harry Yeff)
By Botto
Curator Jesse Damiani on the exhibition:
“An artist’s sketchbook is one of the most precious spaces for research and experimentation. In its ideal, the sketchbook is an intimate domain where artists capture ideas, test compositions, wrestle with subjects, and scribble marginalia, engaging in an ongoing inner dialogue that audiences don’t witness.
In analog forms, sketches are highly correlated with drawing on paper. Simulation Sketchbook: Works in Process poses a simple question: what does a sketch look like for an artist working in more experimental modes like digital art and time-based media? What is a sketch when it’s not a conventional drawing?
Whether they take the form of code, video, 3D models, immersive spaces, or multimodal explorations that don’t fit a neat categorization, these “sketches” are no less integral to the development of the respective artist’s body of work. Because of the relative novelty among audiences, the technical and conceptual merits of these process-oriented arts can be difficult to grasp, leaving underlying poetics invisible or misinterpreted. Worse still is the assumption that this work is tantamount to button-pushing, that machines are the true authors—trivializing the years spent developing a unique relationship with these materials…In this way, their sketches create a cascade of insight: regarding the art, the artist, and the new ways we might understand the relationship among ourselves and the tools of our daily lives.”
Preview of the Artworks:
“Unveiling” by Behnaz Farahi
Behnaz Farahi’s “Unveiling” addresses the representation of the female body through the veiling and unveiling of identity. It was created in direct response to the Mahsa Amini protests in Iran that began in September 2022 — and supplanted the work that the artist had originally intended to contribute to the Simulation Sketchbook exhibition. Produced in less than two weeks, the work channels the artist’s raw processing of the feminist uprising taking place in her country of birth. By drawing herself into the final moments of “Unveiling,” Farahi reflects on her own connection to these issues in her personal narrative, and her current position as an expat working in the West, halfway across the world. As the artist writes, “Why are there various laws controlling the bodies and lives of women? Where does the autonomy of the female body reside? While much feminist discourse is informed by a Western woman’s perspective, some of the largest-ever feminist protests are happening right now on the streets of Iran. With the Iranian uprising, ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ has become an expression of freedom and a political slogan to recognize the importance of the autonomy of the female body.”
Note: all proceeds from the sale of “Unveiling” will be donated to charities related to Iran for the families of victims of this oppression.
“Machine Sees More Than It Says” by Mimi Ọnụọha
As an artist interrogating the role of data collection in contemporary society, Mimi Ọnụọha seeks to reveal what’s missing in our algorithmic lives. The presumption that technology is objective and indifferent is a boon to the powerful, often conveniently obscuring those power structures from view. Ọnụọha’s work is an act of sensemaking, revealing these underlying dynamics and relationships in powerful clarity. “Machine Sees More Than It Says” consists of clips of footage gathered from archival videos made between the 1950s and the 1980s. Stitched together, they form a machine's imagining of itself and the courses of development that formed it, hinting at processes of resource extraction, transport, technical advancement, interfaces, and labor. In the words of the artist: “I was working on a completely different piece and kept stumbling across this footage from an array of different videos, all of which seemed to share an aesthetic feel and to hint at much deeper computational stories...as if the tools I was using were intervening to speak of themselves."
“Machine Inspired Voice 00.1” by Reeps One
Artists working in generative formats have different ways of thinking about their tools. For some, it’s just that: tools. For others, it’s more akin to collaborating with a partner. Across much of his work at the cutting-edge of voice and technology, Harry Yeff frames a connected system of AI tools collectively as a sparring partner or workout buddy, a sort of composite machine rival through which to refine his (human) voice’s range and capability. In so doing, the artist uses AI to question the limit of his own voice, an opponent like duet and mentorship that pushes to new-voice and expression. Already among the best beatboxers in the world, Yeff’s lines of pursuit training with machines have pushed his capabilities into realms that truly begin to sound un-, non-, or post-human. “Machine Inspired Voice” is an ongoing research exploring multiple AI driven processes to develop new articulations, phraseologies and compositions in human voice expression. In “Machine Inspired Voice 00.1” Harry Yeff first interacts in real time with a synthetic vocalist using his own voice. Harry Yeff’s ability to develop complex machine-like vocal phrases is then “listened to” by the system and a reply is generated. This artwork offers a glimpse in process, and functions as a pre-release artist proof for a forthcoming series of over 300 AI and Human vocal phraseologies. The work is also presented as a spectrogram, which further reveals the range of audio frequencies visually.
About Feral File
Feral File commissions curated exhibitions of digital artwork and we partner with artists and institutions to explore new ways of exhibiting and collecting. Evolving from the art gallery and digital publishing models, we are borrowing the best traits of each to inform a new kind of art space. Feral File works in tandem with a community of technologists, new media artists, collectors, and curators to redefine and frame a sustainable model for the future of digital experimentation.