Technology in many ways works as an extension of RECEPTION

ourselves, allowing us to offload memories, breach Friday, April 6, 2018 | 5:00 – 9:00 p.m.
geographic boundaries, and traverse our world Please join us at free, a public reception for Katie Duffy
and galaxy with growing speed. As technology and Eric Souther: Agentive Valley. Duffy and Souther
becomes more complex, the space between the will speak about their work and answer questions
digital and the physical continues to shrink, and during a gallery walk and talk, beginning at 6:30 p.m.

unseen algorithms, codes and computer-based

systems become ever more omnipresent in our
daily lives and rituals. Popular dystopian-focused CONDITIONS OF POSSIBILITY:
media depicts how this integration could lead Katie Duffy and Eric Souther
to abhorrent consequences. Regardless of the By Laura McGough
outcome, technology will continue to evolve and
alter the way we see and exist in the world. In his 1994 science fiction novel Gun, with Occasional Music,
Jonathan Lethem creates a future world in which both printed
Artists Katie Duffy (Chicago, IL) and Eric
and spoken word are against the law. Image has replaced text
Souther (Mishawaka, IN) explore the agencies as both communication tool and a form of information control.
of digital intelligence and their interaction with Newspapers communicate events via captionless photographs;
the materials they use. Through video, digital “old television” is replaced by abstract Muzak channels upon
fabrication, performance and new media, they which “aquamarine triangles” create “an endless soporific
dance against a translucent, watery background.” Devoid of
bring to light the patterns, rituals and broad
words, spoken or written, images become a sort of background
possibilities that exist in the space between the noise, always present but ultimately meaningless.
digital and the physical… the Agentive Valley. In Lethem’s cautionary tale of a world without words no longer
this arena, the artists navigate topographies of appears to be the stuff of science fiction. In a recent New
York Times article entitled “Welcome to the Post-Text Future,”
varying realities in order to uncover a connective
Farhad Manjoo notes that “[t]he defining narrative of our online
locus of individual and artificial intelligence. From moment concerns the decline of text and the exploding reach
this point, the artists begin to erode normative and power of audio and video.” Photos and videos, emojis
notions of what it means to be human. and memes, and animated gifs and live streams have come to

continued on back
dominate our online experiences, reducing text to a series of communication system that is textural rather than textual,
hashtags and text letter acronyms (TLAs). One only need look creating a haptic viewing experience that we see and feel visually.
to social media to see this post-text future. More than 800 While Duffy draws our attention to the fruitful ruptures that
million people use the photo-sharing application Instagram can happen when digital and physical intertwine, Eric Souther
for an average of 30 minutes a day. The social messaging app turns his attention — and ours — to the potential harbored
Snapchat feeds our consumption of images by allowing its within the glitches in the media image itself. The video
users to create snaps — photos that are visible for up to ten projection Ritual and Repetition, for example, which documents
seconds and then disappear from view forever. Even Twitter, individuals visiting the Nanputuo Temple in Xiamen, China,
a social media application built on the careful composition of undergoes a process called frame buffering which causes the
text, limiting users to 140 characters per “tweet” or message, image to “misbehave” as individual video frames repeat and
is littered with memes, images or animated gifs upon which a fold onto one another. Human figures multiply and proliferate,
brief text message is layered. at a sometimes dizzying pace, highlighting the notion that
If as media artist and critic An Xiao Mina’s contends, the media images are constructed for our viewing. As we watch
Internet is “the new city street” then video, photos and the visitors to Nanputuo engage in a ritual of prayer, we are
graphics are the new built environment, as integral a provided with a space to meditate on the ritual of media
component of the digital cityscape as houses and buildings are spectatorship, itself., Souther directly examines the post-
within physical space. text experience in Projecting Buddha, a work that references
Yet, as this new media landscape becomes ubiquitous, pioneering video artist Nam June Paik’s 1976 video installation,
the question becomes: how do we critically engage with this TV Buddha. In Paik’s work, a Buddha figure sits in quiet
onslaught of images in meaningful and fruitful ways? Media contemplation before a TV monitor which is airing a real-time
theorist Wolfgang Ernst has suggested that we look for the image of himself. In Souther’s contemporary revisioning, videos
ruptures and breakdowns that occur within the ever-flowing are projected in succession upon a Buddha figure, selected
media stream in spaces that allow us to “observe the nature of randomly from a database of one thousand videos. Within this
the medium, that we see the medium itself.” For Ernst, such constant stream of images, contemplation — both Buddha’s
fissures stand as “conditions of possibility” where new ways of and ours as viewers — seems to be up-for-grabs. As the ways in
envisioning and reimagining our relationship to digital media which we experience the world shifts, what new ways might we
— and a post-text world — can emerge. conceive to seek wisdom?
The sort of breakdowns and ruptures that Ernst identifies The world Lethem paints in Gun, with Occasional Music is
can be found in the most mundane of our media encounters bleak, where image replaces criticality. The conversations that
–glitchy streaming videos, slow-loading Web pages, frozen Katie Duffy & Eric Souther engage their viewers in are much
laptop screens — but they emerge more eloquently within the more hopeful. They demand an active spectatorship that
contemplative space of artistic production and display. Katie asks us to momentarily hit pause, step out of the stream and
Duffy creates such a space in a series of 3D digital prints with imagine anew our post-textual future. 
provocative titles such as Xeno, Liberosis and Sinuous I, II and
III. The notion of a digital 3D print — a digital physical object — Laura McGough is a media art historian, curator, and educator.
is itself a beautiful oxymoron that creates a rupture point where She has organized exhibitions, screenings, performances and
the physical and digital world merge and converge. Duffy plays- streaming content for arts organizations in the U.S., Canada,
off of this notion by creating quirky, morphic digital objects that Europe, and Australia focusing on emerging technologies, gender
somehow seem out-of-place within the physical realm in which and experimental cinematic + media arts practices. She received an
they reside. In Hard C, for example, two bright yellow figures M.A. degree in Interdisciplinary Studies from New York University
are hard-wired to a smart phone seemingly viewing a moving and a PhD in the Department of Media Study at the University
image of themselves on-screen. The effect is humorous but at Buffalo. Her current research focuses on the turn to liveness
also elicits a certain pathos from viewers because these figures within contemporary cinema and media arts. McGough is a
reside both within and outside of mediated space. Serving as Visiting Assistant Professor in the Art History Department at
doppelgängers of sorts, the digital objects that occupy Hard C Alfred University.
mirror our own post-text experience. The digital and physical
worlds similarly bleed into one another in And I Can’t Say That
I’ll Miss My Human Form. In this wall-sized media work, looped
animations and led monitors seamlessly mingle with physical
entities including foam and vinyl to create a new potential southbendart.org